Watermelon Memories

Photo: Marmaris from the hill above


We are sitting on the porch in the shade, enjoying lunch and conversation with friends.

In the afternoon heat, we bite into chunks of rosy watermelon, cold, sweet and firm. I lean back in my chair, luxuriating in the flavour of that quintessential summer fruit.

Closing my eyes for a moment, I am in Turkey, where trucks toil up and down the steep mountain roads around Marmaris, laden with watermelons held in place by nets. A few jaggedly broken ones lie abandoned in the dust, their juicy flesh the province of flies.

Did they roll off a passing truck, I wonder. Or did a picnicking family break them open, then abandon them as not being tasty enough? Turks are true aficionados of watermelons. They even have an old saying that likens choosing a wife to choosing a watermelon.

The small Mercedes bus pulls out of Gokhova, and I watch from the front seat as the sparkling Mediterranean disappears from view. We traverse a narrow avenue of fragrant eucalyptus. Then Ahmet, our guide, spies a mound of watermelons by the road and signals the driver to stop. He hops off and strolls round, making selections.

The melon sellers extricate the chosen fruit, then playfully throw them to the scale man to be weighed. Their umbilical vines, still attached, whirl through the hot air. Ahmet bargains desultorily, then pays. The melon men load a dozen huge ones in the cargo hold and wave us off.

I open my eyes when someone says, "Delicious watermelon!" Home on the back porch again.