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Fishing Line\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Above the bridge the crescent moon hangs, thin as a nail paring.\u00a0 Rose tints the east, the stars are fading and the morning call to prayer pricks my conscience. Ignoring the pain in his eighty year old knees my father will be unrolling his prayer mat\u00a0 towards Mecca.\u00a0 My wife will be preparing the breakfast soup for him and my son.\u00a0 But today is my day off and I, Abdi Dursun, sous chef at the Sultan Hotel, am going fishing.\u00a0 The smell of yesterday’s fish haunts the still empty market.\u00a0 Today I will catch my own fish and I will cook it not for some foolish tourist but for my family.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n My cousin Serkan is waiting in his rusting, yellow motorboat.\u00a0 Already he is chewing gum. Like me he is wearing smart Nike trainers but unlike mine his jogging bottoms are oil-stained.\u00a0 We both have the Dursun thick black hair and broad nose.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cNo time to shave cousin?\u201d\u00a0 His young teeth flash white. \u00a0 \u201cToo early for you perhaps?\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cLess insolence to your elders please,\u201d I laugh.\u00a0 \u201cI will wake up when we see the first fish.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Sliding onto the open water of the Bosphorus we glimpse the minarets of Sulamaniye. The smaller mosques nearby are less magnificent but their wooden domes and tiled minarets gleam, lovely in the strengthening light.\u00a0 A morning smell of warm bread and lentils floats from the shore. Vivid orange of firethorn glows in the green of a garden. \u00a0 A huge oil tanker passes, tossing us violently.\u00a0 Calm returns as its wake fades.\u00a0 We cast our lines but after an hour have only a pound or two of wriggling silver in the basket.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cSo few and so small,\u201d Serkan mutters just as my line tautens, then, \u201cIt’s a big one.\u00a0 Careful.\u00a0 Let me take it.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cNo, no.\u201d\u00a0 I nudge him off with my shoulder.\u00a0 \u201cAm I not also the son of seven generations of fishermen?\u00a0 I will catch it.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n A blue-finned back cuts through the water and we both gasp.\u00a0 I break into a cold sweat at its size.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cLet me, please. I know what I’m doing.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cNo.\u00a0 Leave me. Steer us away from the bank.\u201d\u00a0 He shakes his head but obeys.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Lufer is the most cunning of fish but I am my father’s son.\u00a0 For ten minutes I let it play its tricks, back and forth, up and down till it is exhausted.\u00a0 I haul it in, nineteen inches, truly a sultan among fish.\u00a0 Then I turn to Serkan.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cYou will join us tonight.\u00a0 My wife is\u00a0 preparing kunefe and samsa but I will dress this monster myself.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cI will be honoured cousin.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Tonight we will feast.\u00a0 Tomorrow my son begins his studies at the university.\u00a0 One day he will be a marine biologist.\u00a0 Perhaps he will study the ways of lufer.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Isabel Miles<\/strong> lives, writes and walks in the North Yorkshire Moors.\u00a0 She has published short stories in WTD Magazine<\/a> \u00a0(p.33) and The View from Here<\/a>, and one of her poems was shortlisted for this year’s Keats-Shelley prize.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Fishing Line\u00a0 Above the bridge the crescent moon hangs, thin as a nail paring.\u00a0 Rose tints the east, the stars are fading and the morning call to prayer pricks my conscience. Ignoring the pain in his eighty year old knees my father will be unrolling his prayer mat\u00a0 towards Mecca.\u00a0 My […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9196","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-prose-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9196","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9196"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9196\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9198,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9196\/revisions\/9198"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9196"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9196"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9196"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}