A Mile Down Read Online Free PDF Page A

literally thousands of items, most of them special-purpose or oddly shaped. We still had pumps to get, plumbing and electrical decisions to make, the layout of the main salon to design. It was truly overwhelming. If I’d had more money and hadn’t had any charters scheduled for that summer, it wouldn’t have been difficult. But on a tight budget and time schedule, it was.
    â€œWe go,” Seref finally said, and we drove out to Icmeler, to the boat. This would become our daily routine. I’d meet Seref in his office for breakfast and talk about finances and construction plans, then we’d drive out to the boat to discuss issues and oversee the work, then we’d run errands around town, trying to buy the various things we needed, then back to the boat to deal with more problems. In the evening, I’d go to the phones and Internet cafés to get loans and sell trips and try to hold my business together.
    At the boat that day, I met the crew. Ercan (pronounced Air-John ) I had met before. He was strong, about my height, same age (thirty-two), his head nearly shaved. He had a reputation for being a hard worker and a competent captain. The cook, Muhsin, was in his forties. He was a big guy who wore overalls and a baseball cap and smoked even more than the others, if that was possible. He spoke English fairly well and would be my interpreter for the other two crew. The sailor was Baresh, only seventeen years old. He was a kid. Small and wiry, handsome. He was friendly but didn’t speak any English. Seref said he was taking the kid on as a favor to his mother, a family friend, but he thought Baresh would be good crew.
    There were at least a dozen other men working on the boat at all times, mostly on carpentry but also painters, electricians, and the mechanic, Ecrem. It felt odd to be the owner, the client, walking around the boat inspecting, checking the work of sometimes up to twenty-five men. I felt like a boss, but that was only for a few moments. Mostly I felt helpless, because I kept finding new problems and there wasn’t time or money to fix them.
    The environment inside the boat was smoke and sawdust and the whine of saws and other power tools. Everyone puffing away as they worked. I was especially interested in the head carpenter, a thin, homely guy who had a quick smile and was very traditional. He was one of only two or three who followed the call to prayer during the work day, spreading out a small, rough carpet inside whatever stateroom he was working on and doing his prostrations and prayers. He was not a good carpenter at all by American standards, but he seemed like a good and honest man, full of jokes and songs and obviously liked by the other men. I liked his songs especially, when I could hear them over the table saws and drills. Traditional songs, his voice wavering up high, full of melancholy. The others quiet in their work when he sang. The sound of tools, but no talking. Occasionally one or two would join in. His songs were of a world I had never inhabited. Listening to him, I could forget, for a few minutes at least, all my worry. I was in a foreign land, with all that is rich and good about that.
    The men took an afternoon break for tea at about four o’clock. They would gather out in the pilothouse and a boy came from one of the shipyard kitchens with the traditional pot and small glasses. The men put sugar cubes in and stirred with tiny spoons. They relaxed and chatted, the carpenter frequently telling jokes. I couldn’t understand anything they were saying, but I liked the atmosphere. They were laborers and poor, but they seemed more European than third-world. They looked aft to the sea and one of the islands, lovely in late afternoon, and they were part of an older culture. Constantinople had been the height of western civilization for five hundred years, and that fact had not been forgotten.
    I visited many small vendors and shops with Seref, some right up from