At the mid-point of my early morning walk, I sit on a large flat rock up on the pine-wooded hills surrounding Ayvalık, from where there is a view over the old town, the bay, and across the Aegean to the mountains of the island of Lesbos (called Midili by the locals), which lies a few miles offshore.
This morning, as I sat there drinking water and letting my brain soak up the extravagant blueness of the sea and the sky, I noticed a woman climbing up the very steep slope below me. I walk to this place by a circuitous route with a much gentler gradient, and was surprised to see someone scrambling straight up the hill. As she drew nearer, I saw that it was a village woman, laden down with various items: a huge empty plastic water container, a wicker basket, and what looked like some kind of agricultural tool. She was probably on her way to work on one of the farms that lie on the other side of the pine woods.
I say ‘village woman’ because the women from village families who have moved here to the town have a distinctive style of dress, multiply layered, based on voluminous flowery pantaloons and usually featuring a sleeveless cardigan. They will generally cover their heads with a scarf, but in a fairly minimal way. There are many Kurdish families in Ayvalık, who have moved here from the very poor, mostly Kurdish, south eastern region of Turkey in search of work; the Kurdish women are easy to spot because their headscarves are light and gauzy, with a little lace-work around the edges.
When the woman reached the top, she was out of breath, and sat down beside me on the rock to rest for a moment. We exchanged greetings, and after establishing that I was English, and a university teacher, her next question was ‘Where is your husband?’ In Turkey, this is the first thing a foreign woman with no visible male in attendance is always asked:’Where is your husband?’
I explained that my husband was dead, she patted me sympathetically on the arm, and we sat for a moment in silence, gazing across the sea to Midili. Then she said ‘You’re probably better off without him, dear. You can have a much more comfortable life without a man. It’s just work, work, work, all the time.’ And with that, she gathered up her belongings, and set off again through the trees to begin her day’s work in the fields beyond.
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