Wednesday, April 8, 2026

Several times a week in the mid-to-late afternoon, a man drives his pickup truck slowly down my street, advertising his wares through a loudspeaker that he operates from inside his vehicle. 

"Evet, domates, domates, domatesÇİ," he cries, repeatedly, placing special emphasis upon the final syllable. "Domates! Domates! DomatesÇİ!!!"

Roughly speaking, this translates into English as: "Yes, tomatoes, tomatoes, the Tomato Man!" 

It's a nice way of marking time. 

This kind of street-to-apartment advertising is a vanishing phenomenon, particularly in a city like Istanbul. In my old apartment in Muradiye (neighborhood slogan: only people who live in Muradiye have ever heard of it) this was something I used to encounter a lot more frequently. 

First there was the potatoes-and-onions man, calling out "patates soğan, patates soğağağan," drawing out the second part of "onion" to add about three syllables to the word. "Patates soğan, patates soğağağan!" 

Then there was the plumber, who would spit out the first symmable with particular emphasis: TAmirci muslukçu! TAmirci muslukçu!" 

In summer, the ice cream man would cry "Alaska-Frigo-Alaska!" Simple enough. 

But in winter, as darkness fell, you could hear the plaintive cry of the Boza man. "Boooooohhhhhhhhh, zaaaaaaaa," he'd call out softly, almost gently. "Boooooohhhhhhhhh, zaaaaaaaa." 

It's Boza Time!

   

 

How to buy something that's being sold in the street below you? Well, I guess you could run down the stairs, but that's for losers. 

Instead, cool customers would lower a basket with money down from their balcony. The salesman below would put the desired product inside, often after conducting extended discussions with the customers regarding how much they wanted by shouting up and down at one another. No one had to worry about the guy running off without providing exact change, because we'd all see him again within the next couple of days anyway. 

As an English teacher, I had pretty irregular work hours, and often found myself alone inside my apartment in the middle of the day during the workweek. I spent a lot of my time back then studying languages and writing, and as I heard my friends below calling out to their customers, I felt the rhythm of the day pass by. It was gorgeous. 

The Tomato Man I hear presently isn't nearly as nice-sounding as I remember the others having been, but that's hardly a surprise. What's nice is to be jolted into a memory by a man in a pickup truck, shouting through a loud speaker in a neighborhood street.