Saturday Tradition

On Saturdays, I go to Sultanahmet to visit friends who work in a ceramics shop on a corner facing the Hippodrome. These friends are like a little family, transplanted from Avanos in Cappadocia, who live and work together. Each of them has special tasks assigned according to their complementary skills. Two are master potters. Zafer is charged with giving demonstrations on the pottery wheel on the ground floor. Ibo, unlucky at gambling but lucky in love, speaks fluent Japanese and therefore is in charge of the Japanese tourists. When business is slow, he and Zafer can be found diligently studying Japanese and English respectively. Erdal, a folk dancing expert with years of experience organizing Turkish Nights, speaks Italian and several other languages. He also makes a fine çi köfte, a very spicy kind of meatball made with finely ground, raw beef and bulgur. Şaban, another master potter, speaks very good English and can sell ceramics like nobody’s business. He very conscientiously describes the stages of making ceramics, from forming vessels out of clay to the calligraphic painting and glazing processes involved, and the uses of Hittite libation vessels reproduced in the Avanos workshop.

So on Saturdays, I make my way to Sultanahmet with a treat. Sometimes it’s chocolate or ice cream, maybe fresh strawberries, sometimes börek. On sunny days, we sit outside with tea or homemade Cappadocian wine, watching tourists pass and guessing their nationalities. The shop sometimes doubles as an information booth. At the corner, visitors often consult their maps looking a little lost and on the verge of in-the-middle-of-the-street-dispute so common in tourist areas. Often, they refuse the help offered them from the shop, only to turn back after a few minutes of confused wandering. If business is slow, Şaban teaches me how to play backgammon. I’m not good at it. There are little Turkish lessons for me, and English grammar points for them. Recently, I explained the passive voice to Zafer. I’m good at that.

After a pilgrimage to the silver market yesterday, I stopped to buy baklava for the Saturday tradition. I pointed at a handful of varieties and asked for one portion of each. One portion there was about three times the size of anywhere else, and I accidentally found myself with a box of about 1 ½ kilos of syrupy goodness.

Outside the ceramics shop, a backgammon game with an uncle was in progress next to a huge chestnut tree. I wonder what this uncle thinks of the crazy American who regularly stops by with food. Zafer brought me a plate, and I carried half the baklava to the sidewalk. Once a waitress, always a waitress. A few cousins and a brother arrived; a large bottle of Coke appeared from somewhere. Passersby laughingly remarked that they didn’t know it was bayram (a holiday.) I retrieved the remaining baklava packet from the kitchen, in case.

An elderly neighbor lady with head scarf and hennaed fingers regularly passes by and sometimes sits on the corner. She, like many others like her, sells packets of tissue and mastic flavored gum the consistency of rubber to earn ekmek para (bread money.) Sometimes I buy tissues from her, but yesterday I had already purchased from another lady much like her. Her accent is so thick that I can understand only one in about fifteen words she says, but I do understand when she refers to the American woman who visits on weekends. She was invited to sit and have baklava. She asked for and received a glass of water. Although her eyes said otherwise, she declared she wouldn’t eat because she would rather take some home to her grandchildren. “Teze (auntie) please help yourself and then take some home.” Teze almost greedily took a portion the size of a small slice of pie and happily ate with sticky fingers. She then asked for the grandchildren and with our consent lined a plastic bag with napkins and deposited a few choice pieces in it. At each ever quicker reach into the baklava packet, she looked up as if to ask permission, eventually emptying the box into her syrup soaked bag. Grateful, and happy with a surprise for the children, she thanked me and shuffled her way around the corner to wherever she lives.