The History of Sex: Istanbul -- The Clue of the Upside-Down Shoe -- (Chap. II, Pt. 15)

Once they settle into established relationships, though, Turkish men have sex two or three times a week, he adds.

'And I know that from my own family. Because for Muslims, when a man takes a shower in the morning, it means he's had sex.'

Pity the poor wife who has to shag him beforehand.

And that's not the worst of it: 'Where I come from, the men take a bath in the main room of the house, and the women take a shower outside in the animal stalls—with the cows.'

Pass the soap!

That may explain why Turkish men don't get to have sex more often. If I not only had to convince a woman to sleep with me, but also persuade her to bathe in a barn afterwards, I'd probably still be a virgin.

In Turkey, though, sexual relations are very different—particularly outside the country's cosmopolitan anomalies. 'Women have sex when men want because men are the bosses in the house.'

Under Turkey's old penal code, one of the few reasons a woman could seek a divorce was if her husband demanded anal sex.

Sodomy is still very taboo, despite the fact that it's often a way for an unmarried girl to keep her virginity technically intact.

In court, though, to save the would-be divorcee's face (not to mention her backside), judges would allow her to signal the source of the marital rupture without actually verbalizing it.

'She would take her shoe off and put it upside down on the table.' Mehmet demonstrates for me.

Why upside down?

'Because this is the back.' He points to the sole of his upturned shoe. 'I have an aunt who divorced her husband this way. The man was gay.'