Anatolian Days

Kirsten Voris

Word Count 1,285

Because I was new to Turkey, I had many questions.  

When do I switch to informal tense? 

Was that a dancing bear I saw chained to a tree across from the Dolmabahçe? 

How do you say, “Stop following me?” 

Now, I had another question. One I had never posed. I was in a café with Maria and the man who could answer it. His name was Cengiz. I had spent time kissing him. He wanted to sleep with me. Cengiz was 19 years old. Too young, really. 

Maria and I were in our mid-20s. We’d lived abroad. We were veteran language learners. And over the next three months, we would be learning a new language on its home turf. All the parts of speech. Including the invisible, unspoken parts. The rules that have nothing to do with verbs or nouns. We were learning these rules daily, over tea. Mostly, by making mistakes.  

For example, less than 24 hours ago, I was spotted at the Dolmabahçe tea garden—in the car of another man.  

Each time a waiter passed, Cengiz lifted a finger. Half-filled glasses vanished. Fresh ones appeared. In silence, we unwrapped our sugar cubes. Maria fanned the air. Only two of us were smoking.  

Cengiz waited tables in a restaurant near the hotel where Maria and I lived. The restaurant staff had become our Kurdish social circle. Our problem-solving network. Our friends. We met at the restaurant each night after closing. Efes bottles emptying and collecting. Turkish/English dictionary on the bar. Sometimes, there was saz playing and singing.  

Sometimes we didn’t stop by, and our friends worried. They worried we were lonely, or sad, or meeting untrustworthy people.  

Maria and I were the only women among the waiters. One night there was another. She touched the arm of our saz player. She didn’t use the dictionary. 

I bristled. These were my waiters.  

I puffed up. She couldn’t speak any Turkish. 

I watched her communicate with her gestures and beauty. Eventually, she approached. 

“Do you know where to buy hash?” she asked. 

Maria didn’t. I didn’t. She walked off.  

Maria raised an eyebrow. I took a swig of Efes, grateful that I had more sense. Was this woman here for the drugs? What was I here for? I wondered. The man I was drinking tea with at the cafe?  

Cengiz created clouds—puff, puff, puffing. Not really inhaling. As though his Samsun cigarettes were baby cigars. He coughed. Then rubbed his eyes with the cigarette fist. 

Smoke drifted towards me in soft billows. The Samsun aroma I was learning to love. Still, I wanted to fan the air. 

I stubbed out my cigarette. Maria inhaled audibly. I brought her along because we were a team. Because no one was angry with her. Because I didn’t know how to talk to Cengiz.  

I hated the way he smoked. I loved that he wanted to sleep with me. When I chose him, I thought no one would want that.  

Secretly, I had been hoping for someone else––the waiter who pulled the scarf from Maria’s bag one night, shaking his shoulders in time with the saz.  

I saw him tie the scarf under his chin, and bat his lashes. The men burst into beery snorts. A girl from the village. I understood that much. He removed the scarf.  

As I watched, he danced towards me. My eyes closed, and I felt his hands. He tucked my hair behind my ears. Arranged the scarf around my face. Carefully. My insides warmed. He has a girlfriend, I remembered.  

This was the night we chose who to like. Cengiz was uncomplicated, I thought.  

He avoided my eyes as he smoked. I wanted him to look at me. To laugh. To talk. Maybe this is why I wanted to ask the question I was considering. 

If I could understand everything Cengiz said, I wondered, then would I want to sleep with him?  

I had met other men here in Istanbul. Men who approached slowly and spoke with patience. Men who were hot. The man who taught me how to say, “Stop following me,” was hot. His name was Musa. What if I had picked him? 

I was feeling trapped in routine. Tamed by my friends and their worry. I began taking long solitary walks.

Musa’s place of business was on the other side of the Galata Bridge. Far from my social epicenter. And yet, we were caught together at the tea garden. I tried to shrink down. It was no use. All my Kurdish waiters had seen us.  

They ignored me when I came by the next morning. I apologized. For what, exactly, I wasn’t sure. Sitting here with Cengiz was part of my apology. 

He was not my boyfriend, but he saw me first. I made out with him, on the night of the scarf, and felt compelled to honor his place in line. That seemed important. It was important to my new friends. And I didn’t want to lose them. Men who waited for me to pick up the dictionary and find my word.  

As I thought this, I felt sad. I took out a cigarette and extended it, like in the movies. Like in the movies, Cengiz lit my cigarette. Maria sighed.  

Maria and I lived in one room at the hotel Dünya, which means world. A single bulb dangled from a wire. Water flowed sporadically. Through our window, we saw into the next building. We saw men, day and night, sewing.  

Our friends said we shouldn’t live at this hotel. Women who lived at this hotel could be mistaken for prostitutes, is what they meant. We said we liked it there. It was convenient.  

Sometimes, Maria and I did things that didn’t make sense to our friends. They’d look concerned. Start using words we couldn’t possibly know yet. Once, I reached for the dictionary: inatçı. Stubborn. I felt a tick of annoyance. A twinge of pride. Eventually, someone would shrug and get us all tea.  

At the cafe, more tea arrived. I took one sugar cube, Maria, two. Cengiz stirred in four.  

“That’s village style,” he told me one day, as I counted his cubes. Then he took a fifth between his teeth and sipped his tea through it. “Kurdish style,” Cengiz said, crunching the half-melted sugar. Smiling. 

I had never been to Eastern Turkey, where Cengiz was from. But I had watched old Turkish movies on the TV in the Dünya lobby. There are mountains. Streams that run in spring. Sheep. There is no work. This much I knew.

I considered his life. One that was harder than mine. I waited. As I waited, I could feel the small beginnings of care and warmth circling my heart. I waited some more. I tried concentrating. On his hands. His eyelashes. I still didn’t want to sleep with him. I felt disappointed in myself.  

Spoons clinked in glasses. Sugar vanished. Cengiz coughed. Maria took out her camera and began framing shots. I tested my tea––too hot. Cengiz studied his hand, the door. He was waiting for something. He was waiting for me.  

I let him.  

I continued to sneak around with Musa. I learned to hide better. Sometimes, I worried about getting caught. Feeling compelled to explain, in Turkish, what I couldn’t explain to myself in English. 

Some mistakes were the same in both languages. At home or away, I was afraid to choose what my heart asked for. So I didn’t choose. Which is the same as choosing everything.  

I spent an afternoon with Cengiz, drinking tea in penance. The waiters seemed satisfied. I was foreign. Confused, but learning. Maybe this is what they decided.  

Kirsten is a writer with essays in Sonora Review, Superstition Review, Hippocampus, Knicknackery and other fine places. She is the co-creator of the Trauma Sensitive Yoga Deck for Kids and is hard at work on the biography of a Vaudeville-era stage psychic. Check in with her on IG: @thebubbleator or Twitter: @bubbleate