Then I tried to call the UK from my landline only to find that the phone was constantly engaged. I pressed all the buttons on the base unit. I disconnected all the wires and reconnected them again. Only after an hour of fruitless endeavor did I remember what had happened in my absence; namely that the telegraph pole on the road beneath my house had been dug up and replanted against my wall, no doubt initiating all these problems.In the morning I phoned Türk Telekom and listened helplessly to one of those long lists of push-button options that used to be the bane of life in England. There was not, it seemed, any button that could be pressed to get through to a real human being, but to give TT their due, I only had to wait a couple of hours before their men were on their way. A decade ago foreigners couldn’t have a telephone line in their own name, and I had come to a mutually convenient arrangement with the owner of an Internet café with a spare line on which he had to pay tax. Ever since then my line has borne his name, which meant that the men and I got off on the wrong footing when they dashed to his house rather than mine.
Still, they were soon shinnying up the pole to inspect the box at the top and agreeing that, yes, I had been cut off but that the line could be reinstated at once by the simple expedient of tossing a wire across the courtyard, securing it to the window frame, and then running it across my sitting room floor. The biggest snag was plugging it back into the socket. At once I had a flashback to the days when the electricity was being installed. The electrician and the works’ supervisor were in agreement that the socket should go behind the desk at floor level. “But won’t that make it difficult to get at?” I wailed. They cast withering looks in my direction. Two local men versus one foreign woman - - it was no contest. I gave in as gracefully as I could - - and have been regretting it ever since.
Clearly such a makeshift arrangement couldn’t continue, so then the electrician arrived and sketched out plans for re-embedding the cable in the wall. The nasty, dusty business of hacking into the stone, inserting the cable, then covering it over again with white cement fell to two young Nevşehirlis, and I tried not to panic as they angled ladders on top of the wall, and tossed hammers and nails across the courtyard. By the time they’d finished the desk had been lugged out again, and the wall had a grey scar running down it, but at least the phone was working.
Meanwhile at street level a mirror has been embedded in the wall in place of the pole so that drivers can see round a blind bend. The tourists love it. It’s perfect for checking their make-up and the angle of their hats!
Pat Yale lives in a restored cave-house in Göreme in Cappadocia.
