Istanbul, Turkey: The Etiquette of Apple Tea
By Tara Kolden

I don't remember where I picked him up; most likely it was on a corner near my hotel.  Istanbul was just shrugging off the last snowfall of early spring, and there wasn't much foot traffic on the slushy sidewalks, even though the neighborhood was blocks from the Hagia Sophia and the Blue Mosque and would likely be overrun with tourists in a matter of weeks.  There weren’t many lodgers at the budget hotels that lined the street, so the few foreigners who came and went were subject to immediate scrutiny from the locals living and working nearby.  It took me a few hours to learn that women traveling alone were sized up with each passing doorway, and that I must look like I was in need of a drink.

“Lady, you come and drink tea with me?”  This from the proprietor of the hotel next to mine, purportedly a cousin of my landlord.  He lounged in the entranceway of his own establishment.  “Hot tea.  Nice on a cold day.”

I smiled at him, but begged off.  And I declined a similar invitation from the front desk clerk at the hostel down the street.  From the shop on the corner came another appeal.

“Apple tea,” cried the shop owner, “or coffee—you like coffee?  Come and drink with us.”

I shook my head again and walked faster.  It was my first time in Turkey, but hardly the first time I’d met a friendly proposition on my travels.  Before Istanbul I’d been in Athens, where the come-ons had been fast and frequent.  There were the uniformed guards at the gates of the National Gardens—who were supposed to stand silent watch, but clicked their tongues when women walked by.  Or the middle-aged man who’d attached himself to me in Syntagma Square and, before we’d walked two blocks, suggested a weekend tryst at his country home (in his favor, he’d quoted Homer).  This unwanted attention was something I had expected as a solo traveler; but if it was an occasional nuisance in Athens, in Istanbul it was as constant as my shadow.

I had rounded the corner on my way to Topkapi Palace before I realized that someone had quietly fallen in step beside me.  A young Turkish man was matching my pace, stride for stride.  Our eyes met and he smiled at me—it was only left for him to offer me tea.  Instead, he asked if I was looking for a carpet.

The question caught me off guard—surely nothing in my demeanor suggested an urgent need for a floor covering.  I was grubby and hollow-eyed after a week of trekking through the Mediterranean and living off cheap food; and the beat up backpack slung over my shoulder did nothing for my mien.  I probably could have passed for homeless.  I did not need a rug.

I told him this, but he wasn’t easily dissuaded.  “My shop is just here.  Please, you will come and look?”  He gestured to a shop across the street.  Against the grey of the icy pavement and surrounding buildings, the shop windows stood out like jewels.  They offered a glimpse of several hundred Turkish carpets, some rolled and stacked against the walls, others laid out on the floor, the better to show off their intricate patterns.  They were beautiful, and the price of just one was probably more than I had budgeted for my entire trip.

“Thank you, but no,” I told him.  I enunciated the words, and he understood perfectly.

“No pressure to buy,” he assured me.  “You can only look.”

I couldn’t walk any faster than I already was.  Beside me, he wasn’t even winded.  “Really,” I told him.  “I can’t.”

Abruptly he changed tack.  “You are going to the Hagia Sophia?”

I nodded.

“You would like a guide?”

I shook my head.  “Thank you, no.”

Still I couldn’t lose him.  We turned another corner and were faced with the magnificence of the Blue Mosque.  I didn’t want to rush past the minarets without pausing to appreciate the view, but neither did I want to stop with this strange man.

“No, thank you,” I repeated, but he was impervious.

“You are here for how long?”

I sighed.  “Just a few days.”

He took stock of this and nodded.  “You will visit the Hagia Sophia, Sultan Ahmet—perhaps Topkapi?”

“Yes,” I admitted.  In the distance, I could see the fortification wall of the palace.

He eyed me carefully.  “You need a guide, you will come to my shop?  I promise you, I can show you many things.  Many interesting things.  You will come to me?”

“Sure,” I said, relieved that our meeting appeared to be at an end.

“You know where to find the shop?”  He was insistent on this.

“Yes,” I said.  Anything to be left in peace.  At last he slowed his pace, and I made my own way to the esplanade and the main gate of the palace.

Topkapi was a labyrinth of imposing grey walls and room after room of treasure.  I devoted the afternoon to an exploration of its many displays: porcelain and silver, spoils and relics, imperial costumes.  Most beautiful of all was the harem, with its many tiled and gilded rooms and shimmering divans.  I wondered at first whether the sultan’s concubines were unhappy in their captivity.  But as I passed through the final rooms of the harem and returned to the inner courtyard of the palace, I wondered if it was instead the sultan who felt imprisoned.  Where the harem was delicate and inviting—both in architecture and in decoration—the rest of the palace seemed more a utilitarian outpost than a royal residence.

It began to drizzle in the late afternoon, and the wind off the Bosphorus left me chilled.  The palace was unheated, and eventually not even the lure of more treasure could keep my mind off the cold.  Near closing time, I made my retreat.  The esplanade in front of the castle was busy with vendors, and I bought a wool scarf from one of them to supplement my inadequate outerwear.

The view from the palace was magnificent.  The Hagia Sophia’s immense outline coupled with the Blue Mosque’s lofty minarets to form a silhouette that reminded me of my childhood copy of The Arabian Nights.  But if the buildings seemed familiar to me, so did a face in the crowd.
The carpet seller was waiting across the street.  Waiting for me?  Or another female tourist?  I wasn’t sure, but when he spotted me threading my way through the tea vendors and the postcard hawkers, he detached himself from his corner roost and glided to my side.  I couldn’t help but acknowledge him.

“You enjoyed your visit to the palace?” he asked.

             

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