Siro by David Ignatius (short books to read txt) 📕

now batting her eyelashes quite furiously.

“Hello, pistachio,” he said. In Turkish, the word for pistachio—fistik—was a term of endearment for shapely women. The girl smiled.

“What is your name?” asked Taylor in Turkish.

“Gungor.”

“What did she say?” asked George.

“Gungor. That’s her name.”

“What kind of a name is that?”

“Turkish, dummy.”

George laughed. The young lady in yellow laughed, too, although she hadn’t a clue what they were saying. The Turkish pimp did not laugh. He appeared to be upset by the bilingual conversation, the laughter and the general confusion that had resulted from the entrance of the two Americans.

“We are under the Turkish flag here,” he said in his most dignified tone. “We speak Turkish!”

“Kasura bakma,” said Taylor politely. Pardon me. Don’t make anything of it.

The dignity of the pimp appeared to have been assuaged, and Taylor was about to resume bargaining when he saw a sudden look of terror in the pimp’s eyes.

“What is it?” asked Taylor.

“Madame Mazloumian!”

Taylor turned and saw a small, white-haired old spinster entering the room from a back door.

“She has come for the money,” said the pimp, who looked genuinely distressed. The girl in yellow, also vexed, disappeared behind a curtain. The ice queen remained on her stool.

“We better go,” said Taylor. “This looks serious.”

“Who the hell was that?” asked George when they were outside again.

“An Armenian lady named Mrs. Mazloumian. She owns most of these places. Supposedly she’s the biggest taxpayer in Istanbul.”

“An Armenian?”

“They’re sort of the designated hitters in this league. They’re Christians, so they can do all the naughty things that are forbidden to good Moslems, like run whorehouses for good Moslems.”

“Hey, Al,” cut in George. “All this shopping is building up an appetite. I want to get laid.”

“Fear not, my boy, Ms. Right awaits.”

They continued down the street. Taylor looked in one window, glanced at the haggard women on display, and pushed George farther on, toward a large crowd—the largest yet—gathered in front of a picture window.

“What do we have here?” asked Taylor, elbowing toward the front.

What they had was an absolutely stunning brunette, naked from the waist up, with the most ample breasts Taylor could remember seeing outside a men’s magazine. They were at once very large and very firm, and the areolae around the nipples were a rosy red, almost as if they had been rouged. She had long black hair that glistened like a horse’s mane, and when she saw the two Americans approaching, she tilted her head back and shook her hair wildly and wantonly.

“My God!” said George. “What a piece of ass.”

“Let’s go inquire, shall we?” said Taylor, opening the iron door of the shop with George on his heels. Several of the Turks burst into applause—for the girl and her prospective patrons.

Taylor got right to the point. “How much is she?” he asked the resident pimp. George was still staring in wonder at the woman’s breasts.

“Let us not talk of money, my brother,” answered the pimp, sensing that he had here a customer who might pay three or four times the normal price.

Taylor pressed him. “How much, please, my friend?”

“Twenty thousand Turkish liras.”

“She is beautiful, but for that I could marry her.”

“Fifteen thousand Turkish liras,” said the pimp.

“Al,” said George, still studying the woman. “Come here. I wanna show you something.”

“Hold on,” said Taylor. “Let me finish bargaining.” He turned again to the pimp. “Five thousand Turkish liras,” he said.

“Ten thousand liras,” said the pimp.

Taylor shook his hand.

“Hal-lo, big boy,” said the Turkish lovely to George. It seemed she spoke a few words of English.

“Al!” implored George. “Come here.”

Taylor walked toward his friend, marveling again at the woman’s bosom.

“You like my tits?” said the brunette in throaty-voiced English.

“Definitely,” said Taylor.

“You want fuckee-suckee?” she said huskily.

“My friend does.”

“Hey, Al, for chrissake, I mean it. I got to show you something.”

As Taylor approached, George whispered urgently in his ear. “Look at her throat.”

“Fuckee-suckee?” repeated the woman. “We go upstairs!” The pimp, too, was encouraging George to head up the stairs to one of the tiny rooms.

“My God, you’re right,” said Taylor. “She has an Adam’s apple!”

“That’s not all,” whispered George. “Look at her wrists. They’re as thick as yours.”

“I don’t believe it!” said Taylor. He was shaking his head.

The Turkish whore blushed and turned away. She realized that the Americans had discovered her secret.

“Upstairs,” said the pimp more urgently.

“I don’t fucking believe it!” said Taylor, still shaking his head.

“Five thousand Turkish liras,” said the pimp.

“Go fuck yourself,” said George.

The embarrassed “woman” disappeared behind the stairs. She returned with a towel draped around her. The crowd of men outside, still eager for the tit show, began hooting and booing, which attracted more people from nearby.

“Aptal yabanci!” shouted one Turk to George; it was a vulgar Turkish expression that meant: You stupid foreigner.

“Has siktir!” cried another, which meant, more or less: Fuck off.

“Shit!” said Taylor. “We better split before this gets nasty.” He and George pushed their way out the door just as the crowd was pushing toward them, and they barely managed to squeeze through. Their departure seemed to further inflame the Turkish onlookers. A man in his twenties grabbed George’s arm; another pushed sharply against Taylor’s back. Taylor took George by the elbow and literally yanked him away from the crowd. They were walking quickly up the small hill toward the gate when a group of Turkish gendarmes, aroused by the commotion, trotted down the hill past them. Taylor nodded deferentially, but the policemen, in their haste, barely noticed him.

When they were safely outside, George turned to Taylor and put his arm around him.

“My pal!” he said. “That’s the last time I ever let you take me to a whorehouse.”

“Calm down, Georgie,” said Taylor. “It’s all part of your introduction to the mystic East.”

“I wonder if she had her dick cut off.”

“You’ll never know. Unless you’re prepared to spend five thousand Turkish liras.”

“Give me a break!” said George.

They walked back toward Galata Tower, where Taylor roused the consulate driver, who had fallen asleep.

“Come on,” Taylor said to George. “I’ll buy you