With the beginning of bayram, calm always falls on the city. The streets were wistful, strangely quiet so that instead of traffic sounds you heard breezes blowing in the cyprus trees. This year was no different. Now that Ramadan was over, most people had typically left the city to spend time with family in the towns and villages of Anatolia.

“It’s nice,” I said to Özge. “The city’s so quiet for a change!” We were in a taxi, heading for an afternoon at a seaside park in Caddebostan.

Özge nodded, looking out the window at the relatively empty streets as we passed the Fenerbahce football stadium. We felt like we could breathe for a change.

Sitting in our laps were two packed-up lawn chairs we’d purchased with some of the money from our wedding. We also had brought along a knapsack with lunch, a magazine for Özge, and a book of Carver stories for myself.

“There’s a bakkal that’s open,” I observed, as we passed it. Most of the shops were closed for the day.

Özge instructed the driver in Turkish, and he pulled over, letting me jump out and dash into the market. Inside I grabbed three cans of Efes beer and a big bottle of water for Özge. I was the only customer.

“Iyi bayramlar,” I said, giving customary holiday wishes.

“Iyi bayramlar,” the man said in return, handing me a receipt.

Outside, I jumped back in the cab and we continued on the journey. Özge packed the beer into a portable cooler (a wedding gift), and I held onto the water in its plastic bag.

Presently we arrived at Caddebostan. The driver let us out near the park, and while Özge paid the driver, I slung the two lawn chairs over a shoulder, and grabbed the knapsack. As the taxi drove away, we walked onto the grass, surveying the park and looking down towards the sea. It was a bright, windy afternoon and the current seemed to be blowing away from the shore. Spots of shade crouched beneath cool cyprus trees.

It was not as crowded as the day before, but there were plenty of people out. Most of them were families, out enjoying the bayram. Some of them appeared to be gypsies, or perhaps Syrians. I asked Özge and she wasn’t sure either. There are many of both to be found in the city these days. “And the Syrians are learning to speak Turkish very quickly,” she said.

The children were all slim and brown, bare-chested and running around in the grass, some of them returning from a swim, their hair all wet and sticking up.

We found a spot under a tree that offered good shade, and folded out the chairs. One of the children, a little boy, toddled up to us. “Para,” he whispered, stretching out a tiny hand.

“Yok,” I said, and my wife refused as well. With a listless expression, the toddled past.

“He must not be more than 3 or 4 years old,” Özge said, shaking her head with disbelief. “Already he is asking for money.”

“I know.” It was all too common, especially nowadays, with thousands of Syrian refugees living in the city, sharing space on sidewalks with the gypsies who have been here for ages.

We sat down in the chairs, unpacked our stuff and settled in. I popped open a can of Efes, and picked up on where I had left off in the Carver stories the day before. Özge shifted her chair so that she could stretch her legs against the tree, and got out her magazine.

It was windy, so that down at the seaside the people sat on the wall, sunbathing, but not so many went swimming. In Istanbul, if the wind is blowing toward the shore, it’s not advisable to swim, since the wind blows the refuse and other junk in from the busy Bosporus, and people are afraid of bacteria. But if the wind is blowing outward, then the sea, especially here at Caddebostan, can be nearly as clear and accommodating as what you’ll find down on the south Mediterranean Coast.

I squinted, with the bright sun coming through the trees, and noticed that w the wind was blowing offshore, which was a good sign. There were lots of sailboats, and in the distance you could see ferryboats taking people out to the Prince Islands. The islands would be very busy today, too busy, which is why we settled on Caddebostan.

“Are you going in?” Özge asked.

“Not now,” I said. I wanted to drink the beer and read for awhile.

“Look,” my wife said, pointing over my shoulder. “The cat from yesterday!”

Sure enough, lounging under one of the trees was a black and white cat that had been there the day before. It was a lazy, tentative creature that refused, with the dainty air of a rich housewife, any food you offered it. Caddebostan is a fairly wealthy seaside neighborhood, with creamy white houses and apartment buildings, home to retired Turks. Most of the cats here that you saw were fed by the locals and so they were lazy, plump and nonchalant.

The sea birds and crows were a lot more aggressive. The day before, when we offered the black and white cat some chicken, and it had daintily refused, we dropped the bits and bones into the grass. Within minutes, all of it had been picked clean by the birds, who were so crafty and quick that it was all gone before we even noticed.

Behind us, one of the poor families was having a barbecue. The smoky scent of the cooking meat was wonderful, and turning around, I saw a mother, with her headscarf and flowing dress, handing out shishkebab to the children.

“It must be nice for them,” I said. “After a month of fasting, to be able to eat during the daytime again.”

Özge got out some of our lunch. She had brought gözeleme, a traditional Turkish flatbread that her mother had made for us during a visit last week. The bread was tasty and filling, like all homemade bread, and with bits of feta cheese mixed in. While we were eating, Özge called up her family in Anamur. She talked with them for awhile, wishing them a happy bayram, and put me on the phone with her mother for a second.

I complimented her mother on the excellence of the gözleme.

“Afiyet olsun!” her mother said, wishing me good appetite.

I drank another beer, read for a while longer. Then it was time for a swim. I got up and walked down to the waterfront. Here there were cycling lanes, and you had to watch for passing cyclists and rollerbladers. There was only one guy coming, a beared young guy riding his bike with his hands resting easily at his sides. We saw each other in time, and he avoided me as he streaked past.

Down at the wall, there was a break where you could enter the water. Here, it is very stony, and you have to be careful of slipping on the algae. The water was mostly clear though, and the current was still blowing out, so I stepped gently over the stones and slid into the sea. It was perfect, with just that quick shock of chill right when you go in, and then a nice, comfortable temperature afterward.

I swam out about fifty yards or so, backstroking most of the way. I continued a bit further, then stopped, then floated on my back. Over on the shore, a group of bikini-clad young girls were thinking about swimming. They stood tentatively, the water up to their knees, while a bald, hairy chested man, who appeared to be their father, encouraged them to go out a bit further. “Gel! Gel!” he cried, inviting them out.

Further down, I saw one of the covered women, a mother, had taken off her headscarf and was washing her hair in the sea. Her hair was long and it appeared to fall in thick braids. The splash of the sea water dripped from her hair onto her flowing dress, which she hiked up to her knees, keeping on hand on the dress, while she wrung the sea water out of her hair with the other.

I swam back to shore, got out, passing the young girls and the father, who was still trying to get them to go in the water. I stepped onto the grass and walked back over to our picnic site under the tree. Özge was trying to nap, with the magazine over her eyes, her feet reclined against the tree.

“How was it, baby?” she asked, with her eyes still closed. She had set a towel on my chair, so I used it to dry off. With the strong breeze, you got chilly.

“Not bad,” I said. “Except for the wind.” It was chilly until you stood in the sun for a few minutes.

We had been to Anamur before our wedding, and had spent three days swimming in the crystalline, silky waters of the Med, so of course it was not the same. But it was better than nothing and we were content to be out of the house and getting some sun and fresh air.

Özge would not swim in Caddebostan. “Besides, it’s your thing, you and Omer’s,” she liked to joke.

“Omer will be back on Sunday,” I said. “Maybe we can come out then.” Our friend Omer was spending the bayram with his family in Buyukcekmece, outside of the city.

“Can you if we lived here in Caddebostan?” I asked. It was one of our normal routines. In the evenings sometimes after dinner, in our neighborhood, we liked to walk together and look at different houses, admiring the gardens especially.

“It would be lovely,” Özge said. “I could have a dog, and a garden. That’s all I really want, baby. A dog and a garden. Is that really asking too much?”

“I know,” I said. “It reminds me of a friend from school. She and her husband live in Texas, and are quite well off. They could afford to buy a place here with no problem at all probably. But on Facebook the other day, she was remarking that she always wanted to buy her own island somewhere, that it would be nice having her own island.”

“I don’t need an island,” Özge said. “Just a dog, and a garden. That would be nice.”

“I just meant,” I said, “That it seems like people always want more, no matter who they are.”

****

Just then, the children, the young boys we had seen earlier, passed by again. Their families were very poor, and for a moment, I reflected idly on the juxtaposition of the poor families there in the park with the poshness of the surrounding neighborhood. Not ten minutes away was Bağdat Caddesi, the Istanbul equivalent of Rodeo Drive. My school was located there. And yet even on Bağdat Caddesi, with all its desperate housewives and acquisitive Arab tourists, one often encountered gypsies, even Syrians, hanging about near the exquisite shops, begging for money.

“One of those boys came over here,” Özge said. She opened her eyes, and went to get a cigarette.

“What—you mean, while I was swimming?” I asked.

“Yes. He wanted to have my shoes.” Özge’s black leather sandals were resting in the grass.

“What?”

“Yes! He said, ‘Can I have those shoes?’ Of course, I told them he could not.”

“That’s strange,” I said. “Why would he ask for your shoes?”

“I don’t know.”

The boys had gone back to where their family was sitting in the grass. Behind us, the barbecue was finished, and the covered woman was packing up. The smell of the meat was still smoky-rich and heavy in the breeze. A black dog, which had been hovering around, going from group to group in search of some treat, picked up the scent, and made its way over until the covered woman hissed and waived him off. The dog retreated, shaking its head and wagging its tail.

Over on the bike lane we heard the cries of a seller. He was an old man, pushing a wagon with a cooker full of corn on the cob. “Fresh corn! Fresh corn! Corn! Fresh!” he called out, addressing the sunbathers by the sea and those of us sitting in the grass as well.

I asked Özge if she wanted some corn, and she said yes, and so I ran over and I asked how much. “Dort lira,” the old seller said, showing four fingers. I told him we take two, which came to eight lira.

I jogged over to Özge, who handed me a ten lira note from her purse, and I went and paid the guy. He asked if we wanted salt, and I said yes, so he sprinkled salt on the corn from a big can.

Nearby, a small girl from one of the poor families, was standing there, pitifully clutching a single gold lira coin. I couldn’t figure out if she was trying to buy corn with it, or if the seller had, charitably (it was bayram) slipped it to her without me seeing. The girl wanted some of the corn, and her black eyes were fixed with shy hope on the wagon, and the corn cobs poking out from the top.

I offered to give the little girl one of our corn cobs, and started to extend it in her direction. But the street seller saw, and shook his head. He made a gesture that seemed to say, don’t do that, it’s not a good idea. He turned to the girl and waived her off back in the direction of her family, who were sitting on a blanket in the grass some twenty meters away. I thought I heard shouting from some of the family members, like cries of protest, and thought maybe they were directed at the street seller.

I went back to our place under the tree. Özge and I ate our corn, along with the last of the gözleme. The corn was good, crisp and salty, and when we finished eating we placed the cobs in the grass for the birds. One of them, a crow, landed immediately, shewdly sized up its prey, darted nimbly over and started pecking at the remains.

The black dog, the one we had seen earlier, also came over to investigate. Its size and manner forced the crow to jump back, leaving the dog to investigate. The crow fixed a look of hatred on the dog, and let out an evil shriek, looking as if it would stab one of the dog’s eyes out any minute. But the dog was not interested in the corn, nor bothered by the angry bird. Instead, with a bored shrug, a twitch of his ears, he loafed along the grass away from us and down toward another group. The crow, with one last reproachful look in the dog’s direction, went back to pecking at his prize.

I got up and had one more swim.

“Shall we go?” Özge asked some time later, after I had returned, dried off and finished the beer.

“ Yeah, let’s go.”

###

We packed our things and walked back across the park. It was late afternoon now, and most of the other people seemed to be packing up too. We passed the covered woman, and noticed her group had a portable tea maker. “That would be nice,” I said, pointing it out to Özge. “It would be nice to be able to make a cup of tea like that here. After a swim, I mean.”

“Why?” Özge scoffed. “You wouldn’t drink it anyway. You have your beer.”

“True.”

We left the park and walked down a lovely quiet street full of the beautiful houses with their secret gardens, wondering which ones had swimming pools. We passed a couple of young boys who were dressed in matching yellow shirts and new blue jeans, walking in that well-behaved way that children do when they are wearing new clothes on a special day.

“During bayram children usually get new clothes,” Özge said. “It’s a tradition. When I was a child we always got new shoes. The night before, I would always go to sleep holding my new shoes. All during the night, I would hold my lovely new shoes.”

I looked at her as we walked. She was my wife now, and she looked lovely as always. We had been married only two weeks. We did not have many things, but after all, we were not doing too badly either. It was a nice evening, and we felt happy being together, passing by the houses and their gardens.

###

James Tressler is a writer and former North Coast resident. He lives in Istanbul with his wife Özge and cat Ginger.