Paul Theroux - The Great Railway Bazaar

'Why, that's awfully clever of you,' said Molesworth, when I rang him up to explain this to him. Then he changed the subject. He was enjoying Tarabya; the weather was perfect. 'Come up for lunch. The taxi will cost the earth but I can promise you a very good wine. It's called either Cankia or Ankia. It's dry, white, with a slight twinkle - a pinky colour, but definitely not a rose, because I hate rose and this was very drinkable indeed.'

I could not meet Molesworth for lunch. I had a previous engagement, my single duty in Istanbul, a luncheon lecture arranged by a helpful American embassy man. I couldn't cancel it: I had a hotel bill to pay. So I went to the conference room where about twenty Turks were having a pre-lecture drink; I was told they were poets, playwrights, novelists, and academics. The first man I spoke to was the most pompous, the president of the Turkish Literary Union, a Mr Ercumena Behzat Lav, a name I found as hard to conjure with as to pronounce. He had a look of spurious eminence – white-haired, with tiny feet, and an unwilling gaze that was disdainful in an overpractised way. He smoked with the squinting disgust people affect when they are on the verge of giving up smoking. I asked him what he did.

'He says he does not speak English,' said Mrs Nur, my pretty translator. The president had spoken and looked away. 'He prefers to speak in Turkish, though he will speak to you in German or Italian.'

‘ Va bene,' I said. 'Allora, parliamo in Italiano. Ma dove imparava questa lingua?'

The president addressed Mrs Nur in Turkish.

'He says, "Do you speak German?"'

'Not very well.'

The president said something more.

'He will speak Turkish.'

'Ask him what he does. Is he a writer?'

'This,' said the man through Mrs Nur, 'is a completely meaningless question. One cannot say in a few words what one does or is. That takes months, sometimes years. I can tell you my name. Beyond that you have to find out for yourself.'

'Tell him he's too much work,' I said, and walked away. I fell into conversation with the head of the Enghsh Department of Istanbul University, who introduced me to his colleague. Both wore tweeds and stood rocking on their heels, the way English academics size up new members of the Senior Common Room.

'He's another old Cantabrigian,' said the head, slapping his colleague on the back. 'Same college as me. Fitzbill.'

'Fitzwilliam College?'

'That's right, though I haven't been back there for donkey's years.'

'What do you teach?' I asked.

'Everything from Beowulf to Virginia Woolf!'

It seemed as if everyone had rehearsed his lines except me. As I was thinking of a reply, I was seized by the arm and dragged away in a very powerful grip. The man dragging me was tall and stoutly built, bull-necked, with a great jaw. His palely tinted glasses did not quite hide his right eye, which was dead and looked like a withered grape. He talked rapidly in Turkish as he hustled me into the corner of the room.

'He says,' Mrs Nur said, trying to keep up with us, 'he always captures beautiful girls and good writers. He wants to talk to you.'

This was Yashar Kemal, the author of Mehmet My Hawk, the only Turkish novel I could ever remember having read. It is thought that before long he will be awarded the Nobel Prize for literature. He had, he said, just returned from a visit to the Soviet Union where he had been lecturing with his friend, Aziz Nesin. He had addressed audiences in Moscow, Leningrad, Baku, and Alma-Ata.

'At my lectures I said many terrible things! They hated me and they were very upset. For example, I said that socialist realism was anti-Marxist. This I believe. I am a Marxist: I know. All the writers in the Soviet Union except Sholokhov are anti-Marxist. They did not want to hear this terrible thing. I told them, "Do you want to know the greatest Marxist writer?" Then I said, "William Faulkner!" They were very upset. Yes, Sholokhov is a great writer, but Faulkner was a much greater Marxist.'

I said I didn't think Faulkner would have agreed with him. He ignored me and pressed on.

'And the greatest comic writer, of course we all know – Mark Twain. But the next greatest is Aziz Nesin. And don't think I'm saying that simply because we're both Turkish or because he's my best friend.'

Aziz Nesin, who was across the room mournfully nibbling an American embassy vol-au-vent, has written fifty-eight books. Most are collections of short stories. They are said to be hilarious, but none has been translated into English.

'I have no doubt about it,' Yashar said. 'Aziz Nesin is a greater comic writer than Anton Chekhov!'

Aziz Nesin, hearing his name, looked up and smiled sadly.

'Come to my house,' said Yashar. 'We go swimming, eh? Eat some fish? I will tell you the whole story.'

'How will I find your house?' I had asked Yashar the previous day. He said, 'Ask any child. The old people don't know me, but all the little ones do. I make kites for them.'

I took him at his word, and when I arrived at the apartment block on a bluff above a Marmara fishing village called Menakse, I asked a fairly small child the way to Yashar's house. The child pointed to the top floor.

The disorder in Yashar's apartment was that comfortable littering and stacking that only another writer can recognize as order – the considered scatter of papers and books a writer builds around himself until it acquires the cosy solidity of a nest. On several of Yashar's shelves were editions of his own books in thirty languages; the English ones had been translated by his wife, Thilda, whose narrow desk held an open Shorter Oxford English Dictionary.

Yashar had just been interviewed by a Swedish newspaper. He showed me the article, and although I could not read it, the word Nobelpreiskandidate caught my eye. I commented on it.

'Yes,' said Thilda, who interpreted my questions and Yashar's replies, 'it's possible. But they feel it's Graham Greene's turn now.'

'My frint,' said Yashar, hearing Greene's name. He placed his hairy hand on his heart when he said it.

Graham Greene seemed to have a lot of friends on this route. But Yashar knew many other writers and he slapped his heart as he listed them. William Saroyan was his friend, and so were Erskine Caldwell, Angus Wilson, Robert Graves, and James Baldwin, whom he called 'Jimmy' – he reminded me that Another Country had been written in a luxurious Istanbul villa.

'I can't face going swimming,' said Thilda. She was a patient, intelligent woman who spoke English so well I didn't dare to compliment her on it for fear she might say, as Thurber did on a similar occasion, 'I ought to – I spent forty years in Columbus, Ohio, working on it like a dog.' Thilda sees to the practical side of his affairs, negotiating contracts, answering letters, explaining Yash-ar's harangues about the socialist paradise he envisions, that Soviet pastoral where the workers own the means of production and complete sets of Faulkner.

It was unfortunate that Thilda didn't come swimming with us because it meant three hours of talking pidgin English, an activity that Yashar must have found as fatiguing as I did. Carrying our bathing trunks, we walked down the dusty hill to the beach. Yashar pointed out the fishing village and said he was planning a series of stories based on the life there. On the way, we met a small quivering man with a shaven head and the regulation rumpled thirties suit. Yashar shouted a greeting at him. The man crept over and grabbed Yashar's hand and tried to kiss it, but Yashar, by jerking his own hand, turned this servility into a handshake. They spoke together for a while, then Yashar slapped the man on the back and sent him tottering away.

'His name Ahmet,' said Yashar. He put his thumb to his mouth and tilted his hand. 'He drunk.'