Broken chain

“Either don’t go, or go to the end.”
(They are

Just like in a distant childhood, my mother wrote me in printed letters a detailed list - how much, what and at what price to buy.
I did not forget to warn:
Don’t get lost there, the base is very big, you’ll go wrong and get lost. Look closely at the wallet.
Mom, I am forty seven years old.
“In Moscow you are forty-seven, and in Istanbul you are five years old.
What a list. Mother, give me a bigger bag and make it strong.
You don’t need a suitcase, you don’t need anything. There are plenty of bearers in the basement. For five liras anything to the house will be brought, especially not to carry far away. very comfortable.
Oh great service.
What did you think? This is Europe, well, in the sense of Asia, well, in the sense, you understood...

I understood and went to the bazar.
I bought everything from strawberries to pomegranates, exhausted my mother’s list and started looking at the carrier.
There were really a lot of them, each had a large woven basket behind his back, and each, straining his veins, sang loudly his desperate advertising song.
And here, among them, I noticed a vanity old man. He was such an old crooked and thin man, which seemed like a huge basket - his mistress, and not the opposite.
So I decided to give my grandfather money. He was delighted, squeezed, carefully loaded my bags into the carton, and the potatoes and apples down, the cherry up, all as appropriate, and as I realized that I did not belmes in Turkish, showed on my fingers five liras, and somehow with difficulty, not badly, squeezed the carton on my back. I pointed to the nearest mosque as a landmark of my home, and here, from where I could not get to my grandfather, a little boy of seven years of age ran by, with a hammer in his hand. It seems that the boy was a grandfather, not even a grandson, but rather a grandson.
Go to. I am in front and my grandfather is behind. My cargo twisted the carrier almost to the ground. So he walked, with one hand resting on the boy’s shoulder, and the other on his ankle.
For some reason I was very embarrassed, I walk lightly like a plantator, and they... and why did I take five pounds of potatoes? Without her, there would be eight kilograms, from the strength of ten and grandfather would not be so bended.
A hundred meters away, the grandfather knocked something on his grandson and dropped the basket to the ground.
I was not surprised to see how the cargo was already on the shoulders of this seven-year-old elephant on thin legs.
The boy was even worse than his grandfather. And how did it happen that between a grandfather and a boy, two generations of healthy and strong men were missing? Where did they disappear? There was no doubt that this grandfather in the whole white world had only this boy, and that the boy had this very ugly grandfather.
Here, only one has not been able for a long time, and the other is not yet able to drag a huge basket. It looked like a broken chain.
I decided to stop this bullying of people, I extended the money and said:

Finish a thousand.

The grandfather helped the boy to sit on the ground and surprisedly began to tick his finger toward the mosque, saying, what "okay"? We have not yet reached halfway.
I shrugged my hand and again said, “OK,” stretching the money.
Grandfather grumbled his shoulders sadly, carefully pulled out of the basket the bags, overly pushed away my hand with the money, put on the basket, hugged the boy and plunged back toward the bazar.
And then I realized that I horribly offended them with my pity, because they are not poor, but honest workers with a great sense of self-worth. And it doesn’t matter that grandfather, maybe Ataturk still remembers and has long been unable to drag heavy baskets. Principles are more expensive than money.
I quickly caught up with the bearers, said “okay” again and pointed to my bags and the mosque.

So they were tired and wet and dragged to my very house, then the matter under the basket and supporting each other. Even I had time to smile, don't worry, say, everything is under control, we will come somehow.
I paid them twice as much.
Grandfather wanted to refuse, but then still agreed, because the tea is the customer's lust.
They were still sitting on the stairs of our approach a long time later. They rested. I even brought them cold water.