On my way back I wander through the streets around the bazaar, looking for a Shahmaran souvenir. It’s Sunday and the bazzaar is closed, but quite a few other shops are still open. The salesmen seem relaxed, and amused by my mission, as they try to sell me anything else they happen to have. Shahmaran goodies are nonexistent in these quarters, it seems.

One young man proposes that, in fact, he could be the Shahmaran. He does have rather extraordinary eyes, large and green-hazel, slightly protuberant, almond-shaped. Distinctly ophidian. He’s delicate, with pale skin and black hair. All this is a combination I find very attractive. I can’t help flirting just a little.

“Hmm, maybe your eyes,” I say.

The organs in question light up. “They change colour,” he volunteers. “Look.” He faces away from the sun. “Now they’re brown…” He faces into the sun. “See, now they’re green.”

“Mine do the same thing,” I tell him, demonstrating.

He looks quite delighted, and offers his hand. We shake, in a pact of the snake people. “Are you an angel?” he says. “You are an angel…?”

The temptation, when asked this, is to say yes; but then one may be asked to provide evidence in the form of miracles and such. I’ve already told him I’m English (a better policy than saying you’re Australian, if you want to be left alone - I’ve taken to telling all Turkish salesmen I’m English).

“Just an English girl,” I say, adding, “a married English girl,” as my little experiment in flirting has possibly garnered a bit too much of a result, though I hope he’s just flirting too (every second salesman I’ve met here has been an outrageous flirt - all in the name of persuading you to part with money. These young Turks would make a fine harem of gigolos).

Somewhat to my surprise he breaks off our handshake and looks embarrassed. “Ah, me too… I mean, I have… there is no chance.”

With smiles, Snake Eyes and No Angel wave bye-bye, and No Angel crosses the Galata Bridge and wanders back up the steep cobblestone street, past Habib Gerez’s house, thinking what a pleasant activity flirting is. It makes you feel good and them feel good. Even if one inadvertently excites hopes that then have to be let down (a higher risk in cross-cultural flirting), there’s still an exchange of admiration, as when one smells a flower, or when two friendly dogs sniff each other’s butts and wag their tails.

I’ve decided there should be a visual kei band called Harem of Gigolos. They wouldn’t have to be Japanese. In fact, they could be 3D computer generated characters, like in the Final Fantasy movie. For live performances they’d be projected as holograms. Maybe they live in the universe of Reverend Ford Large.

Back at the Buyuk Londra, I sit in the wonderful lounge and do a little writing. I can hear a voice at the bar - male, middle-aged, measured, American, no, Canadian, speaking about the problems of Native Americans in British Columbia. To my Australian ears it sounds familiar. Do-gooders with the best intentions making things worse. Governments throwing money around in all the wrong directions. Numbers of native people bludging off handouts and benefits - hey, wouldn’t you, too? I would. Overfishing leading to problems no white man would have foreseen, such as not enough fish to feed the sled dogs, so the indigenous people who are still living, or trying to live, a traditional lifestyle are flying salmon in at exorbitant cost to feed them. Why won’t dog food do? Who knows? Maybe there are better nutrients in fish. Or, simply, why should they feed them dog food, when the lack of fish isn’t their fault?

Every so often the voice pauses, as if for the reply of an interlocutor, then goes on. There is, in fact, another middle-aged man at the bar, but he is quite silent. Maybe he communicates with the other by telepathy. I feel like having a conversation, so I wander over and order a capuccino at the bar and admit that I’d been overhearing. We get talking. The talkative one is called Don. The quiet one is Norm. They’re both biggish guys, casually dressed. When I tell them my last name is Bishop, they show me their college rings, both from a college called Bishops. Don says he’s sitting in the chair where Ernest Hemingway used to sit. Agatha Christie, he says, used to stay at this hotel too. I don’t ask whether she was also a barfly.

Don and I compare notes on the mess of indigenous affairs in both our countries. We agree, rather obviously, that there are no easy answers to most of the problems. One thing seems clear: governments could spend their indigenous affairs budgets more intelligently. I’m thinking of an example a friend from Queensland told me, about an Aboriginal community that received a $300,000 road grader. They hadn’t asked for it. They didn’t want it. So they drove it into a swamp and left it there to rust. And why not?

He asks what I’m doing in Istanbul. Holiday, I say. Are you a spy? he asks. I’m tempted to say No, I’m an angel. I say, If I were, I wouldn’t tell you. Norm laughs. He says that’s what Don said when someone asked him the same question.

They’ve been haunting an archaeological dig, looking at Anatolian ruins and petroglyphs. Norm becomes more voluble, speaking about how much is still to be discovered. What happens, he says, is that countries dig up their own stuff and leave the rest: Italians excavate Roman ruins, Greeks excavate Greek ruins, and so far no one had done that much about these several-thousand-year-old Turkish ruins. Maybe they’ll find the Shahmaran’s underground realm.

The talk turns to religion. Don is a convert from Anglicanism to Russian Orthodoxy. Norm thinks this is funny. I admit I think it’s funny too, though I’m not sure why. Perhaps just because it’s unusual. Anglicans who want a religion that’s a bit more, well, religious, or who just want a bit more incense and chanting in their lives, usually turn to Popery, or become Hare Krishnas.

Don doesn’t think it’s funny at all. Norm seems rather contemptuous. Don says Norm is a physicist. Feeling guilty that I was disrespectful of a Don’s sincere faith, I ask why he converted. Norm insinuates that it had something to do with the Anglican church’s decision to ordain women. Don says this did have something to do with it, but not everything by any means. Now, me, I can’t respect any religion or sect that doesn’t treat the sexes equally. I may still find value in the ethics championed by such a religion, but that’s as far as it goes. However, it’s a conversation I feel like, not an argument, so I make no comment, and listen to Don explain a few points of doctrine that do make Orthodoxy sound a bit better than Anglicanism, though the differences seem minor.

“What about original sin?” I ask.

“Orthodoxy believes in man’s fallen state,” says Don. “When you pray, you say, ‘I’m a lousy sonofabitch and I know it’.”

Ah, see, this is where I just don’t get it. When I pray, I say, “Chutzpah pleases you, Crom, so grant me (insert request). And if you do not listen, then to hell with you!” But like I said, I’m not spoiling for a rumble. I’d rather just listen to this interesting man talk. He says something about cigars, so this seems like a good time to split my last two cafe cremes. Now Don gets to sit in Hemingway’s chair smoking a cigar, albeit one of ladylike size.

A third man has appeared: Aidan. Also middle aged, lanky, with a mellow, smoke-damaged, purring British public school drawl that I want to bottle and preserve in a collection of fabulous voices. Don has offered me a drink. I ask for a banana daiquiri.

“We have no bananas,” sings Don.

“I could just have a gin and tonic…” But I haven’t had dinner. I want something more nutritious. “How about a white russian?”

There’s no coffee liqueur.

“Oh, for god’s sake, just have a gin and tonic and get it over with,” says Aidan, sounding as weary as the Wandering Jew.

But they have Bailey’s, so I can have a sort of Irish white russian. Aidan, it turns out, is Irish. He says Bailey’s isn’t, it was invented in London.

I talk to Aidan for a bit. He’s on holiday too. He loves Istanbul. I ask what he does when he’s not on holiday.

“I’m a pathologist,” he says in a voice of infinite sadness. He gazes into his drink, as if it had the power to show him some far better, alternative life. “Breasts are my speciality, so I get to look at all the tumours.” He’s beginning to sound like a cross between Marianne Faithful and Eeyore. “You specialise, you know. Right now they want you to specialise even more, so that you’ll only look at blood or lungs or guts for your whole life.” He loes Bangkok, too. “Another great city. It works.” This expression, “It works”, is one I’ve used about Bangkok, and heard other people use. No one says it works perfectly, but work it does.

Aidan buys me another white russian. I go and change into warm clothes for the plane. Don and Norm, who had gone to dinner, are back, and we all say farewell. Norm is going to send me pictures of those petroglyphs, and Don is going to put our time at the bar at the Buyuk Londra, or some version of it, in a story. Neither of us had said anything about being writers. It’s something you don’t always tell people.

I’m a little tipsy from my white russian dinner and wander rather unsteadily, and with unwonted cheer, through check-in and passport control. The plane’s another comfy new Airbus, and half empty. With a spare seat beside me, I can curl up with my feet hanging just a little over the edge. I get 6 hours sleep - not bad for a plane trip at all.

In Bangkok it’s rather a hot day for this time of year.

“In Hat Yai,” says the taxi driver. “Boom. Boom-boom-boom-boom-boom-boom. Many people, no good.”

“How many dead?” I ask.

“Five or six. Many injured. Mother, baby. No good. Muslims. People no like Thaksin. Now where? Could be Phuket. Could be Bangkok.” He laughs nervously.

Tomorrow night, Thailand has its low-key coup. My Thursday kids class is cancelled. Later, one of my Japanese housewife English students tells me the Japanese schools had two days off. She and her husband found out about the coup, she says, when the school rang them at 1:00 a.m. to annouce the snap holiday.

“We were very surprised,” she said.