The Way of Cay

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Hey all!

Oy! I've owed you some tales, I'm sorry. I am now writing these retrospectively, from Seattle. Time has gotten away from me since returning to the belly of all evil (not Seattle - it's lovely here. It's this damn country of mine that gives me the gout), and I do apologize for the stories left untold.

This one, however, is not so much of a story though - really just an explanation of Istanbul, Cay, and about a hundred pictures I took. Istanbul is a beautiful, phenomenal mess of humanity. There are 20 MILLION people crammed into that city of snaking, narrow alleys, with hardly ever an inch to spare. For anyone. I was baffled, then, how it came to be that this saturated city of so many had nary a speck of litter! Where was it? To make matters even weirder, there were absolutely no garbage cans on any of the streets! Well, where did folks put their coffee cups when they were done with 'em, I wondered.

Of course, there ARE NO coffee cups, see. Tea rules in Istanbul - it's called "Cay," except if I had a proper Turkish keyboard, the "C" would have a little squiggle underneath it. The word is pronounced, of course, "chai." Folks - especially men, cause they're the only ones ever hanging about on the streets (or even, really, walking about on the streets) - drink cay all day long. ALL. DAY.

And they don't drink it out of paper cups like a certain bunch of wasteful slobs coming to mind. No indeed. There are guys who run about the commercial districts, also all day long, carrying silver trays of elfin fluted glass cay cups, usually nested on a dainty little saucer. Some were plain glass, some were etched, some gilt with silver. Almost all were accompanied by mini silver spoons, serving to stir in the loads of sugar Istanbullus seem to prefer. Bought with a little plastic chip, the cups of cay were left, abandoned, in the corners of windows, the entrances to alleys, on step stools, for the Cay Man to come and fetch.

I was absolutely smitten with the little glasses, and my time in Istanbul became a veritable easter egg hunt. Each day, my eyes scanned, of course, for strawberries, sardines, and simit, but also for cay cups stashed about like a real-life game of Where's Waldo. I have an embarrassing number of photos of them - and think still of a few photos that were not to be, the glass snatched away just as I was about to snap the perfect shot. The one that kills me the most was the one in the bucket of still-flipping fish.

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