On an island known to the Greeks as Prinkipo, Ayshe Özakcam spends six months of the year attending a small stall beside a steep cobbled path. She sells home-grown plums, and apples, which she peels and quarters deftly with a sharp knife, to pilgrims passing en route to the Orthodox Church of Ayios Giorgios (St George) on the summit of the island.
What is intriguing about this is not that Ayshe ekes out a living by selling apples, or that she sits all day in the full glare of the Mediterranean sun, but that she is a Muslim, that the island is off the coast of Istanbul, the great Turkish metropolis, and that the majority of visitors to the Orthodox church are in fact Ayshe's fellow Turks.
Ayshe sees nothing remarkable in this. She doesn't appear to dwell on the faith or motivations of those puffing past her up the hill. When I ask her who the most common visitors are here she can't answer definitively. 'Greek, Turks,' she shrugs. 'Everybody!'
On the day of my visit, in late summer, she may not be far wrong. On the island (called Büyükada by the Turks), I encounter well-healed Istanbul locals, Turkish matriarchs in headscarves and dour gabardines, a black-garbed Greek widow, and a gaggle of Iranian tourists who offer around pistachios.
But the busiest day of the year is St George's Day, April 23, when Turks come by the thousands, taking advantage of the fact that the date coincides with a national public holiday, Independence Day. Crowding onto ferries in Istanbul, they arrive on Büyükada early in the morning, Muslim pilgrims en route to a Greek Orthodox church to ask favours of St George.
'The path to the monastery is packed with bodies,' recalls long-term Turkish resident and journalist Pat Yale of her visit on St George's Day last year. A festive air reigns. At the base of the hill pilgrims buy charms and trinkets designated for whatever they may be praying for: health, love, marriage, children. 'People unspool cotton along the lower slopes,' says Pat, 'and some hand out cubes of sugar.'
These are Muslim customs; cotton threads in white, red or green signify wishes for peace, love or money; the sharing of sugar and