You walk like a Turkish

"You walk like a Turkish." The voice that hailed me was that of a young man following me across Istanbul's Hippodrome. I turned to see who my tracker was, intrigued by the quaint nationality adjective-turned-noun switch of his greeting - if it was a greeting.

"Is that a good thing?" I asked my new companion - for he had quite naturally fallen into step alongside me as we crossed the broad boulevard heading towards the Blue Mosque. Over to our left lay the bulk of Ayasofya another in Istanbul's imperial garland of holy jewels. Emre, as he cheerfully introduced himself, was a friendly, engaging fellow, well suited to the profession of tour guide which he revealed was his career ambition. He laughed delightedly at my pointed question and avoided it like any good guide asked for an unnecessary judgement.

"You want to see Sultanahamet Mosque, you better walk quicker, they start to pray there soon." I tried to up my pace, finding it difficult with the after effects of recent bi-lateral meniscal repair surgery still painfully seizing up my knee joints. I began to understand how I might have been mistaken from behind for a Turkish pensioner out for a walk in the autumn sunshine. I was wearing a pair of borrowed trainers, my grey suit trousers more appropriate to the conference I had come to Istanbul to run, a knee length black dust jacket of the kind worn by storemen and kindly donated to me by a neighbour in a recent clear-out and in my hand I carried a plastic bag stuffed with notebooks and newspapers. He had a point.

Indeed as I entered the serene orbit of the Blue Mosque, it occured to me that I had more Turkish in me than perhaps I realised. Earlier that morning I had been in a Turkish bath house rubbing myself down with a coarse towel before sipping steamed tea and nibbling a piece of rosewater infused pistachio sweet from a stall in the Grand Bazaar. Here in the outer courtyard of the mosque I was admiring yards of blue ceramic tiles with their myriad tulip designs. Towels, tiles, tea and tulips were all Turkish inventions claimed my self-appointed tour guide - with different degrees of justification, I felt.

We approached the entrance to the mosque where stewards were on duty turning tourists away from entering the vast hall beneath its worshipful dome at the start of Friday prayers. "Only prayers, no tourists now." Their instructions were clear, firm and entirely reasonable. I bent down with some difficulty to remove my borrowed trainers and placed them on the shelving provided. I drew my dust jacket around my plastic bag, hitched up my baggy trousers and shuffled forwards. "I am told that I walk like a Turkish," I said.

 "You are welcome, amca, enter."