brings everyone together: ohababa!

In those years(*), the most popular adult games was "long donkey". When you search for long donkey on the internet, you can find enough information. There was also a form of this game known as "topan eşek" specific to our geography (Aydın, Sultanhisar). Teams had to be 5-7 people for topan eşek. In this game, players of one team would stand, bend their heads and interlock their arms above their heads to form a dome of flesh and bone. The last tall player of the same team would take a 2-2.5 meter long rope, one end of which was held by one of his teammates. The task of the players of the second team was to come running from a distance and jump and sit on this dome. While the players of the second team continued their efforts in this direction, the midwife of the first team would try to touch the players of the opposing team with his other hand or foot without letting go of the rope in his hand. If the midwife touched one of the players of the opposing team after jumping, that is, while he was in the air, the game would continue. But if he managed to touch one of them while his foot was on the ground, or if one of the players could not sit properly and slipped, his foot or body touched the ground, his team would burn and it would be their turn to be the donkey. While we are on the subject of games, I think it would be right not to mention the game of "tingil mingil tos", which is also unique to our geography. But for this, I must first mention "irim". "Irim" means "dead-end narrow street" in our local dialect. There was an irim in our neighborhood, 50-60 meters long and 5-6 meters wide, a little below Kocayol. In fact, the houses where my aunt Hafize and her adult children lived, which were in the same garden as our house, opened onto this street. Especially when spring came, the importance of this street as a playground suddenly increased. At that time, there would be plenty of slugs (snails) in the gardens and at the bottom of the secluded walls. When these animals abandoned their shells or died, the place would be filled with empty snail shells. We would look for and find the largest of them possible. Then we would wet some soil and turn it into mortar, and with the help of this mortar we would stick the empty snail shells into the gaps on the bare stone and adobe walls on both sides of the irim, at a height that would exceed our height. Then we would put a wick made from old cloth pieces inside these shells and fill the shells with olive oil. When darkness fell and we lit the 30-40 primitive lamps lined up on both sides of the irim, that old and modest street turned into a place of celebration,would turn into a dream world. In Irim, two different games were played, both at night. The first of these was the "minstrel" game. For this, two separate teams, each consisting of 5-6 children, would gather at either end of the street. One team would be in an attacking position, the other in a defensive position. The rule of the game was to overcome a large ankle bone by forcing or surprising the players of the opposing team to reach the opposite target. When the two teams clashed in the middle of the road, a scene resembling American football would emerge. Therefore, it was necessary to go to this game with as old and worn-out clothes as possible. Because the loss in terms of ripping and tearing would be quite high. The second game played in Irim was a type of hide-and-seek game, whose name we cannot figure out the origin and meaning of, called "tingil mingil tos" and generally played at night. In this game, there would be two separate teams of 5-6 people each. In the game, one team would be the hiding team and the other would be the "yuulan" (seeking) team. The first team would hide together in alleys, behind clusters of trees, in vegetable gardens, and would change places from time to time. In order to show their location to the searching team, they would shout "tingil mingil tooos" every now and then. The other team would try to triangulate (correlate) these sounds and determine the location of the other team and find them. The neighborhood-wide version of this game was called "küçük tingil mingil tos", while the much larger version, that is, the town-wide version, was called "büyük tingil mingil tos". In the big game, which was played very rarely, it was almost impossible to find the hiding team. Because the members of the hiding team would wander around the town for a while, shout "tingil mingil tooos" many times, then disperse to their homes and go to bed. The other team would wander around the neighborhood, your street, mine for a while, then realize the situation, and after a while they would disperse too. The teams led by some experienced and smart kids, when they were the searching party, wouldn't bother chasing at all, but would go home and sleep in this way, making fun of the rookies on the opposing team who were running around town yelling "tingil mingil tooos" at the top of their lungs. Author: Ertuğrul Kumcuoğlu, "Musteşar", Kronik Kitap, 2019