Going Off Piste

Yusuf may have a plan but he was always ready to improvise. He and Mustafa had been calling and texting the two girls on and off all evening and then suddenly they both turned up. It may have been the attraction of seeing the strange Englishman but there was more to it than that.

Clearly Gulzah was the one Mustafa had been coyly courting by phone but Esra was the one in Yusuf's sights. I wondered about patient Imran back in Mardy, a key part of Yusuf's plan. But as they say, out of sight....

With again no common launguage we muddled along, now with lots of added giggling but Yusuf clearly wanted things to move faster. He kept whispering to me and I defensively pointed to Sally and my age in the hieroglyphic book but thankfully I wasn't to be part of their late evening plans.

I soon decided that I was supposed to be very tired and headed off to bed. They seemed to be separating off into couples, one more innocently than the other. It seemed an interesting contradiction in this devout, non-beer drinking Muslim culture. Maybe Kurds are a little more laid back. How things went I shall never know, but well I think.