customers). You couldn't get on a car even if you became tired, you could only sit somewhere and rest. Where, then? The Çukur Muhallebici, of course. It was crowded, you had trouble finding a chair to sit on, but this structure leading to religious associations and standing at the end of a quite wide road, has always come to my mind with the poem "Public Fountain and the Pidgeons" by Ziya Osman. On the other hand, it was also fun and it gave one a feeling of relief. It meant a place where you could take a breath in your day's journey, an inn that the traveller reaches on foot. I didn't like "muhallebi", that favoured Turkish sweetmeat made with milk, but so what! You could always have a rice pudding (without starch). And perhaps even an ice-cream, if you managed to deceive your mother...
I visited the Covered Bazaar from time to time when I worked in offices nearby. However, at that time I had started to find the small Egyptian Bazaar more exotic - maybe due to all kinds of spice and the rich assortment of fruits and vegetables right outside the doors. Still, something lacked: The spirit of the guild in the Covered Bazaar: The carpetmakers, brassmakers, jewellers, leathermakers. And representatives of some trades which are more or less diminished. Now I again roam those cool and dim streets sometimes, go on exploration trips to the inns - the courtyards within the bazaar. Especially, our favourite, the Cebeci Han. The Covered Bazaar both revokes my adventurist spirit and promises calm at the end of an exciting exploration. Maybe so much time has past that Jeannot and Yanik are actually back.

For many years the words "Covered Bazaar" have projected a cool and dim image in my mind. As if I was unaware of the crowd, the noise, and the insistent shop assistant types. My Covered Bazaar has always been the Covered Bazaar of the beginnings of the 1950's. That's why, black/and/white frames from books on Istanbul published at that time always accompany the real images of my childhood memories. I wasn't fooled by the lights which, although they seemed very bright, could only illuminate the edges of this darkness harbouring mysteries. I chose the poet Orhan Veli as my guide: "Covered Bazaar / Covered box". Anyway, Orhan Veli was the person who created the Istanbul of those days for me with little strokes of words. I thought that the poet, who gave his life when he became a victim of a trick of the city he loved,

approached the Covered Bazaar with the excitement of of the book "Two Boys Around the Globe", and its heroes Jeannot and Yanik. Just like me.
We lived in Beşiktaş and rarely went to the Covered Bazaar. We usually shopped elsewhere: Beyoğlu, the Istiklal Avenue, and sometimes Bahçekapı.The Covered Bazaar was more of a place so stroll in for my mother. We went there from time to time, and strolled the streets until the grown-ups found some nonsense that they had set their hearts on. The bright streets, which pierced the mysterious darkness wrapping the bazaar with the needle of every bulb, were cheerful and busy. They reminded me of the exotic places that adventurers visited. People of the Covered Bazaar looked as though they liked small children, they kept complimenting you on this and that (Now I think it may have been a tactic to draw