Tag #126756 - Interview #78137 (güler orgun)

We did our shopping at the corner grocery store. There were a green-grocer and a butcher, both in the neighborhood, in Talimhane. There were also a small dairy shop that sold products and eggs; and two grocery stores, the Nea Agora and the Taksim Pazari. We did not go to the open market; we didn't need to. An itinerant, street vendor used to pass by, with a horse carrying two large baskets overflowing with fresh vegetables and shout, 'Zarzavatciiii' ['vegetable man' in Turkish], and we bought what we needed from him thus: we lowered a basket tied at the end of a rope; he weighed the goods and put them in the basket, which we then pulled up.

A yoghurt vendor also passed by almost daily, with two flat containers of yoghurt from Silivri, balanced on a long stick resting on his shoulder. It was a kind of thick, solid yoghurt, which had to be cut with a spatula and placed on a dish. On winter nights, a sahlep vendor passed. All the vendors we dealt with were Muslims; the only Jewish shop owner in the neighborhood was a merchant of 'tuhafiye' [haberdashery].

Most of our neighbors were Jewish. They had close relations with my mother. They visited each other to have coffee. We, my nuclear family, spoke French at home and read the Journal d'Orient [15]. My parents' common language was French, because my father, who had come from Romania, did not know Ladino when they met. My mother spoke Ladino with the neighbors.