By Dr. Sally Torkos and Professor Béla Torkos

It was a beautiful, warm Indian summer day, Filo and Sophia were driving from Ozora to Tamasi to do some shopping.  While pulling the van into the parking lot, they passed a car that was just leaving when the man in the car looked up into the driver’s side window and exclaimed loudly: “Papa!” Surprised, Filo, smiled at him as they passed by, and realized: “Only one person calls me Papa and that’s my son, back home…” Wondering who else would be calling him Papa, he thought: “Oh well, it doesn’t matter; the man’s gone by now.” 

As they parked the van and were just getting ready to get out, surprisingly, the same guy drives up and parks next to them. He gets out of his car, smiling a wide, happy smile, while greeting them with: “Salaam-Alaikum.” He looked like a typical Turkish man, with a large, dark, curling mustache, dark eyes and hair, and dusky skin.  Filo has an international face and, and though blue-eyed, has frequently been mistaken for: Turkish, Arabic, American Indian, African, Spanish, Romanian, Italian, Greek, Gypsy, Russian, you name it! People from all over the world have thought him to be a relative and have begun speaking to him in their native language.  

Filo & Sofi get out of the van to greet the stranger with a return ‘”Wa-Alaikum-Salaam,”, when he practically grabs Filo and hugs him, bows to Sofi and kisses her hand, all the while talking rapidly in Turkish. Feeling just a bit overwhelmed by the man, Filo lets him know they are American/Hungarians and don’t speak any Turkish, other than Salaam Alaikum, though Sofi proudly announces they’d been to Turkey. It’s no matter to him, he goes right on smiling and continues with his nonstop talking, now in fluent Hungarian. Everything he does is quick, breathless, fast-paced, yet friendly and smiling and appearing happy and generous while never allowing the listener to take a breath.

Before they know it, he opens his car door and starts tossing things into the open door of the van, 3 dusters fly in, a set of knives, which he demonstrates by cutting a piece of paper in half as “very sharp,” some kind of back massager also gets thrown in.  They start to protest, but he keeps saying: “ajandek, ajandek,” (Hungarian for gift). Then he shows them a brochure that has a picture of ‘his’ factory in Switzerland, as if he owned it. They look the brochure over and see a set of what looks to be ‘very fine’ cooking ware. 

Filo says to him: “Our friend Akos is a chef and would like to see this brochure, we’ll give it to him.” Taking Filo’s words as his cue, he rushes to his car trunk and pulls out a boxed set of cooking ware and starts to shove it into their car, saying: “Check these out, what do you think of them, very fine quality, very expensive, you can’t find them in the stores,” and so on… This guy can talk!  

They do look good, thick stainless steel, good quality enamel inside the frying pan, 16 pieces, “Only a thousand”, he says. They think forint (about $5), he thinks dollars (about 290,000 forints). Filo, tries to be fair and says: “A thousand forints; that’s not enough money for these.”

“Oh, no, I meant dollars,” the Turkish man declares, again in Hungarian.

Following suit in Hungarian, Filo states emphatically: “No way, we don’t carry that many dollars and if we did, we wouldn’t buy pots and pans with them!” 

Perhaps realizing he has pushed them a bit too far, too fast, he backs off and asks: “How about 500 euros?” 

“No”, again Filo responds. “Still too much; we don’t carry that many euros either; we have only about 100. But I don’t carry it on me, our dollars and euro are at home in Ozora. You see, we live half the year in the USA and half the year in Hungary and only use that money when we travel.” Filo was hoping this might be the end of the conversation: “Sorry, no money available.” 

The salesman lowers his price with a sigh: “OK, 100 euros.”

Filo looks at Sofi and asks: “What do you think of these pots and pans? Do you like them?” Filo begins thinking about the house they are re-building, it will be practically new, and so, new pots and pans would be nice for Sofi to have.

Sofi replies: “Yes, they do look good, but. . .” She begins thinking about how she only has Anyu’s 40-year-old chipped pots, then says: “Well, maybe they would be nice; they are good quality.” 

The salesman and Filo start haggling about how to get the money, and finally decide on a solution: the salesman’s brilliant idea, telling Filo: “I will drive you to your house and you can get the money while Mama does her shopping.”

Meanwhile, Sofi, who doesn’t understand much of the Hungarian conversation they are having, begins getting impatient and speaks up in an irritated tone: “Filo, I have to get the groceries, whatever you decide is OK with me; I like the pots but we could also make do with what we have. So, again, whatever you choose is acceptable to me.”  

As Sofi goes to the store, Filo gets in the car with the salesman, who tells him his name is Ibrahim Ali. Continuing to talk nonstop while driving, Ibrahim shares with Filo that he lives in two places like they do. “I have a house in Turkey where I live half the year and one in Switzerland where I live the other half. He then proceeds to tell Filo the story of his life: “I have four wives, you know it’s allowed in my country, and six kids. My grandfather is a sheepherder and makes woolen goods. I’ll bring you some back from him.”  Ibrahim continues: “I’m anxious to sell this last box of pots & pans, they were only used for demonstration, and I don’t want to take them back on the plane to Turkey with me. Very soon, my wives and children will be flying out of Budapest to go back to Turkey for the next 6 months.”

Filo sympathizes: “We are about to do the same thing, getting ready to fly out of Budapest back to Florida, where it’s warm in the winter. You have a similar cycle as we do, I know it gets even colder in Switzerland than Hungary.”

“Yes,” Ibrahim declares, “That’s one of the reasons I was giving you so many gifts and an incredible price on the set of fine cookware. I just have to get rid of them! You can imagine what traveling with four wives and six kids is like… Oh, so much luggage.” 

Filo imagines the scene and just the thought of four wives and six kids is overwhelming; it’s already a lot when he and Sofi go through the long journey from Europe to America. It makes the whole experience with Ibrahim seem so understandable and plausible. Filo thinks to himself: “Maybe we are getting a great deal, and Sofi will really like using such good cookware, she’s put up with old pots long enough. Perhaps I’ll get her some new dishes too.”

When they reach Filo’s house, Ibrahim also gets out of the car and follows Filo inside. Filo had intended that Ibrahim stay in the car while he got the money, but didn’t say anything about it and just let him come along.  Once inside, Ibrahim also followed Filo wherever he went in the house; always talking, and watched him get the money. He saw that there was a bit more than 100 euros, there were some dollars and forints also in Filo’s cash stash. 

Boundaries? This guy had no boundaries and talked so fast and just went in for what he wanted, smiling and friendly the whole time. Irresistible! But as Ibrahim had no boundaries, neither did Filo, because he allowed him to become instantly that close. What was it about Ibrahim that gave him such privilege with Filo? It was that magic word: Papa! That made Ibrahim equal to ‘son’ and from that relationship he easily convinced Filo that the cooking set was worth most of Filo’s stash. So Filo-Papa gave him a combination of euros, dollars and forints to make approximately 200 euros. 

After all that, Ibrahim drove Filo back to the parking lot at supermarket, where he waited for Sofi to come out of the store. Ibrahim, feeling that he had gotten a good amount for his cookware, left a happy man for disposing of his last pots before going back to Turkey.  

Sofi and Filo felt they had gotten a great deal on some very expensive cookware, plus all those ‘free’ gifts.  They were especially able to feel this way because they didn’t come close to paying Ibrahim’s sky high prices. “I wonder how he does it,” Sofi mumbled.

“Does what?” answered Filo, while driving them back to Ozora.

 “Travel back and forth with four wives and six kids?” Continued Sofi. “Do you think he really has four wives and six kids? Maybe he only lets one or two wives and their kids come at a time; four wives and six kids all at once is a lot to deal with!” she exclaimed.

“Maybe he only has four girlfriends, a girlfriend wherever he has his sales territory,” Joined Filo with his contribution to the subject. “If he only lived in Switzerland and Turkey, how did he get so fluent in Hungarian?”

“Yeah! And then they don’t all live together either. Maybe he doesn’t really have those houses; they belong to his girlfriends, along with the kids.” Sofi retorted. “You know, I really thought he owned the factory at first, but now I’m thinking that he just works for the company.”

“Oh, I’ve seen those parking lot salesmen before, maybe that’s all he was,” mused Filo. “I think I’ve even seen them sell cookware!”

“Oh dear! He’s gone from being the wealthy owner of the factory to a parking lot salesman,” laughed Sofi. This was getting ridiculous. “But seriously, do factory owners need to be going to the trade shows or carry demonstrator cookware around with them? Do factory owners go to parking lots to sell their cookware?”  

Filo continued the conversation, speculating: “I wonder if I’ve been taken for a ride in more ways than one. But, it did seem that he was going to be flying out, apparently that night, to go back to Turkey, but four wives and six kids?? It does seem a bit much.” Then he added, “But I have to hand it to Ibrahim, he was really good at getting us to go along with him!” 

They went back and forth, one time thinking they got a deal and the next thinking they might have gotten ripped off. The amazing thing about this guy was that everything he said could possibly be true to a greater or lesser degree.  If he was really just a salesman, and a parking lot one at that, he was one of the best they had ever come across. In the supermarket’s parking lot he got them to haggle over the price of pots they would never have dreamed of buying! He put the desire for those pots in their heads and then gave them a way to get them. Amazing!  

So the question is: Who got the deal? Ibrahim Ali, Filo and Sofi, or all of them?  They still can’t tell if they were hoodwinked or not. One of the things they realized, after the whirl of the sale was over and they were driving home with a brand new set of cookware, plus a set of knives, a back massager, and don’t forget the three microfiber dusters, they had certainly had a grand adventure with this excellent salesman. With techniques that he used, he certainly could sell a lot of pots and pans; maybe enough to support four wives and six kids.

Cover photo credit: Magu Sumita