Murat had a restaurant near the beach not so far from here and ran it with his German wife. We visited the restaurant about a dozen times in the course of one season and soon discovered that Murat had the silver and crooked tongue of a salesman. What was he selling, you may ask. Why nothing less than himself! He explained that he was very wealthy, extremely handsome and a fantastic lover. Die Frau and I looked for evidence of these assertions, but saw none. We did note, however, that tourist ladies were most impressed by his virtues, so we applied the "in the eye of the beholder" lore.

It´s always the case isn´t it? Once you´ve met a person, you tend to see them around a lot. Prior to his dusty and feathery appearance, we had never seen a pink Cadillac in or near our town; now scarcely a day went by without us seeing it. Murat the Rat would be in the driving seat, his long hair blowing in the wind, a blonde bombshell or two with him in the front and sometimes a pal and his girl in the back.

Of course, Murat´s marriage only lasted a year or so, but let´s leave him for now and talk about the general.

Turkish Romeos are amazing aren´t they? Our valley had one who was eventually given a three-page spread in Cosmopolitan. "Beware the holiday Romeo from hell," if I remember well. The article not only described the sheer number of his seasonal romances, but offered testimony from victims of the many cases where he had managed to extract substantial sums of money from them. Here´s the thing, though: He was proud of the article and showed it to everyone.

At the peak of his success, he married a poor dumb cluck from England and she, too, seemed proud of his press exposure! You will have guessed by now that that marriage, too, eventually went the way of Murat´s, but let me tell you precisely how it ended. Romeo was working on a day-trip boat and one day his wife decided to go along for the ride. She settled in amongst the tourists and found herself sitting next to a blousy looking 40-year-old from Burnley (Aren´t about half of all tourists from that grim cotton town or thereabouts?). After some standard tourist talk the conversation took a turn in this direction.

Tourist:

[nudge, nudge] "Ere look at ´im, isn´t he gorgeous?"

Wife:

[embarrassed] "Well, yes, I suppose he is."

Tourist:

[glowing] "I´ll tell you luv, he´s a bleedin´ stallion. What we didn´t do last night just ain´t been done before."

We haven´t actually heard what happened next, so I´ll invent it.

Wife:

"You stupid cow, that´s my old man!"

Tourist:

"Ow gawd."

[Wife throws tourist overboard and attacks Romeo with long, sharp fingernails. In the scuffle, his wig falls off and he loses control of the boat, which hits a rock and sinks, drowning all except the wife.]

A truly happy ending, I think you´ll agree.

Murat the Rat will be in his early 50s by now and we no longer see him around town, neither do we see a pink convertible Cadillac. The new generation Romeo goes for the big black 4x4s with dark windows and air-conditioning.

I used to write letters to English girls from some of these guys and had a lot of fun doing so. Sometimes I would write identical letters to several adjacent girls, and would give vent to my poetic leanings in the writing thereof. Blue eyes? "When I see the blue waters of the Mediterranean, I think of your beautiful blue eyes." Brown eyes, perhaps? "When I stare into your dark brown eyes, I see the infinity of the night sky." No! Come on, that pretend retching isn´t funny; this is poetry, man!