Pomegranate Sunday

Down the main street from me there is a whole bock that seems to have been turned into a covered markets. Canvas is suspended from steel cables overhead and the narrow streets are closed (at least in a de facto sense) to automobile traffic. Simit vendors and others with carts of merchandise pull up at the fringe of the crowd, adding a new layer to the scene. Everything seemed centered around a more permanent market that I had mistook in colder months to be a half-built parking structure. People admired antiques under strings of electrical lights, vendors there dealt in more substantial purchases it seemed, furniture and the like, while outside it seemed all the street vendors in Istanbul had converged and clustered in the one spot. Scarves and shirts, screwdrivers and sunglasses, it was a visual feast.
Street merchants are a funny thing in Istanbul, I am not really sure how legit they are. Some merchants are selling shoes out of a car trunk, books and jewelry from a suitcase, or just walking along with a dozen belts over one arm calling out, "Italian leather, five lira!"
Along with the Sunday cleaning and lying around I usually cook and try a few new things from the store. Along with my chick peas and rice I had a variety of drinks to sample. A week ago large, glass bottles of Pomegranate juice for very cheep began showing up at the market. I also bought one along with what appeared to be a can of pomegranate soda. The soda was a very strange experience, when I cracked it open it bubbled greyishly at me, like a can of Milwaukee's Best. I took a sip, Pomegranate alright! So I sipped and sopped and then I stopped, there was another flavor, malted barley I was sure of it. So I checked the ingredients and sure enough, malt something-or-other. But the can didn't seem to list an alcohol content and my Turkish is too limited to tell if there was only malt flavoring (for god knows what reason) or if I was drinking girl beer. Either way, the real pomegranate juice wins the taste test and the other will have to accept it's place on the shelf.
Staying home is always punctuated by the screaming neighborhood children kicking a ball around behind the apartment building. It's flat and level concrete, however it's also horribly narrow and many kicks send the ball bouncing off the bars over my window. It's not very nice of me, but sometimes I wish they would go play in the street...