European shopping

It was one of the first times that I went to a market in Turkey. I had just picked up my first Turkish words, my beloved was going to cook that night and one of the things I was going to buy was onions. Not too much. So I said to the onion vendor at the market: “Dört soğan lütfen” (four onions please). The guy gets a bag and a spade and starts shoveling four kilos. I quickly said ‘iki!’ (two, the first low number that came to mind) and returned home with a large bag of onions. This comes to mind again now when food prices are rising. The price of bread is going up because of the worldwide shortage of wheat, but vegetables are also getting more expensive. Lemons: once 1 lira per kilo, now 4. Tomatoes: now 5 lira per kilo, once one and a half. Green beans: 15 lira per kilo, once 5, so of these Murat the market vendor has only a small basket available. I ask Murat if the buying pattern of his customers is changing. “Yes, they buy more like Europeans”, he answers. More like Europeans? “Yes, more often per piece rather than per kilo.”