bored, sing a song at the top of their lungs. Now, it would be possible to liken these shoeshine boys to seagulls, the lushes in front of the kiosk to cormorants, and the men shelling mussels to crows.

‘FISHOHOLIC’ CORMORANTS
If you wish, we can start with the resemblance between crows and the mussel-shellers. Go down to the Bosphorus and at the crack of dawn you will find crows by the shore. Their eyes are not on the fish or the sea. For these crows, the leftovers from the evening catch and from the feast that followed make a morning’s breakfast. The pathetic creatures busy themselves with a bit of crawfish, a morsel of pike, or a mackerel’s head! Like those mussel-shellers who don’t know how to swim but nevertheless eke a living out of the sea, the crows roll up their pantlegs knee high. And standing, when necessary, as if they were about to swim, they save face. Cormorants, on the other hand, use buoys for seats the way the kiosk lushes use soda crates. These birds are the lushes of the sea, eating seawater and drinking fish!