| Turkish Carpets |
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| Turkey and its carpets are inseperable. We visited a carpet factory, and I liked this picture of a woman weaver completely surrounded by carpets. |
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| All weavers at the carpet factory appeared to be women, which must be an ancient tradition. Examples of their work are shown below. However, the carpet sellers are 100% male. I was developing a plan to include the salesmen in my video. |
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| Here is a gorgeous carpet. Of course I buy absolutely nothing; but that would not stop me from the unusual type of carpet shopping I had in mind. |
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| I large display from the carpet factory. Years later, in Morocco, I was able to film the carpets being rolled out. The salesman here is one of many who appear in the carpet shopping segments of my Turkish video. |
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| He is one of the first carpet salesmen who established that my nonsense would work. They all speak English and will swoop down upon any potential customer. So the carpet salesmen came to me! I calmly indicated that I was shopping for "the magic flying carpet", and then filmed their responses. Nearly all the salesmen made a serious effort to complete this impossible sale, or otherwise went along with the joke. The traditional Turkish characteristics of tolerance and hospitality were on my side. Nobody dismissed me. Instead carpets were flung into the air to prove they could fly. I was treated to marvels of creativity in the sales pitches, informed that the carpets were certain to fly once I had consumed sufficient alcohol or presented my credit card. The flying carpet shopping routines, conducted in several cities, are definite highlights of my Turkish video. |
| If you have a high speed internet connection, watch the Intrepid Berkeley Explorer's free streaming video of this trip, "What the Sultan Saw", by clicking on AdventurePics.com . |
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