Boat shoes in back alleys

On my way back from the Church of the Holy Wisdom, (or less grandly, the Hagia Sophia) I was exiting an underpass when a shoe-shine man dropped his brush in the midst of going home. He didn’t seem to notice so, like the generally kind oaf that I am, I picked it up and gave it back to him. This pleased him immensely and he insisted that he give my shoes a brush. I insisted that I had to go. He said (as best I could make out) that this would just be a brushing and free, because I’d helped him. I caved. Low and behold, after he’d finished brushing my leather boatshoes out came the polish. He had my feet well in hand, so I just sighed and rolled with it. He asked where I was from and I told him A.B.D. (U.S.A. in Turkish). He was from Ankara. He’d come to Istanbul to get eye surgery but had gotten lost during the post-surgery blindness… or something, and was now shining shoes to pay his way back to Ankara. He was a well-built man in his late fifties and it was a bit intimidating when he finished and demanded twenty lira. We were alone, just the two of us and several of his shoe-shine buddies at the mouth of the darkening tunnel. I said no, free. He protested (rather loudly and a little too close for comfort) that he had lavished a lot of expensive shoeshine on my ungrateful feet (or something to that effect) and that he had a sick baby. “Doesn't everyone,” I would have said had it been within my power. Instead, I told him that that it was too expensive and that I was just a student, although in retrospect I realize I was actually telling him, “Much too cheap, my student.” He was kind enough to keep a straight face abruptly dropped his angry façade when I gave him ten lira. He complimented me on my Turkish, shook my hand, and went in peace. I’m willing to chalk this up to a learning experience. Although, to be fair, my shoes are considerably shinier.