Çay?

Still not boiling...

It’s become a bit of a pattern here in Turkey: people waving an outstretched arm at me whenever they catch sight of me, as if bouncing an invisible basketball. It’s not that they’re urging me to slow down, though I wouldn’t blame them if they did—on certain near-vertical descents I’m scratching at the surface of the sound barrier. No, the waving motion indicates that people want me to stop and come over. The first question is always the same. Çay?

I’ve come to regard these invitations to a cup—or, rather, a tiny tulip-shaped glass—of tea as perfect little breaks. Frankly, I get more invitations than I can accept. Often I’m forced to mime that I just had a cup two kilometres back. The other day, however, the waver’s timing was impeccable. Wrapped in rainproof gear, slogging uphill, I was simply dying for a sip and a bite. I’d felt it coming for quite a while. But that’s the thing with hills. You vow to take a break at the top, but when you finally get there the road beckons you to shoot down like an arrow and see what’s behind the next hill. It’s never the eldorado you somehow vaguely expect. Still, it’s hard to resist the call of the unknown.

Like me, the waving man had come prepared for foul weather. Dressed in a long yellow raincoat, he stood out for miles. He’d arranged a number of shallow wooden crates next to his ancient Massey-Ferguson tractor, each of them overflowing like a horn of plenty. Onions, tomatoes, melons, peppers... He immediately shoved a bunch of grapes in my face and then asked the immortal question. Çay? Why, yes please, I smiled, happy like a soaked cat that’s finally let into the house. He put me on a chair under a parasol, which could hardly cope with the downpour, and started fiddling with a samovar. Big handfuls of wet twigs disappeared into its belly. This clearly smothered the fire, but that didn’t keep him from stuffing the thing to the gills over and over again.

After a good thirty minutes the water in the top compartment came to a reluctant boil. He proudly showed it to me by opening a lid. By then, that cup of tea had become a matter of life and death. My numb fingers could hardly hold on to the fragile glass, and I’m afraid I failed to force my face into an expression of gratitude. In the meantime, not a single customer had shown up. In fact, barely twenty cars had passed. Having drained my glass I was naturally offered a refill. I groaned silently. All I wanted was to be on the road again and plunge into a long uphill sprint to get the blood flowing. But to decline a second glass is like saying the first one was worse than something the bladder of a dying donkey would produce. So I accepted politely and tried not to burn myself while gulping down the tea as fast as I could.

After the next hill again no eldorado where the sun always shines but another fruit seller bouncing an invisible basketball. I kept my eyes glued to the map in front of me, looking for a spell to turn myself invisible, and sped by.