A Rainy Day in İstanbul
Yola M. Caecenary
Tia and Sinan were a couple. They met for the first time on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, New York City nearly three years ago. For some people, their meeting was a coincidence. But for both of them, it was divine intervention. It was the beginning of autumn when the foliage started to emerge, their magnificent yellow, orange, red, gold, and brown and petals were starting to leave their thrones. Their tables were facing windows and side by side at Café Lalo, the iconic café as the set of the late of the 90s Hollywood romantic comedy movie, You’ve Got Mail, at West 83rd Street. At Tia’s table was a plate of cheesecake and a cup of tea, which she hadn’t touched. Sinan was focused on his book. Sometimes he made some notes on his notebook and sipped his coffee.
Clattering dishes and chattering equipment filled the café. Tia’s sobbing shouldn’t have been audible, but Sinan heard it. It altered his focus and turned his head toward Tia. He watched her for a few seconds and then back to his book when he saw Tia moved her head and wiped her tears using the restaurant’s tissue paper. From the corner of his eye, Sinan could see Tia sipping her tea and starting to break the cake with the fork. But, less than a minute, he heard another sob, softer, but continuous. Tia took another tissue and bowed her head. Sinan watched and felt sorry for her. When he saw Tia was taking the third tissue, he closed his book and took a piece of tissue paper and a pen. On the backside of the signature tissue paper that printed with the logo of Café Lalo, Sinan wrote:
Dear young lady, I won’t let you use another tissue paper to wipe your tears but this one only due to trees that were cut to produce it. I hope you start smiling.
Sinan handed over the tissue that written and ended with a smile emoji to Tia who took it perplexingly. She pondered the writing and then, bit by bit, a smile took over her sadness. She looked at Sinan who gave her a warm look and a smile. Tia wiped all the leftover tears and really smiled. Sinan extended her hand along with his name and welcomed by Tia, also along with her name.
Not every situation can be broken by a standard icebreaker. Some cases need more than just anecdote and jokes are needed. In this case, a smile, a friendly gesture, a warm heart, and an interesting topic, worked. Their conversation did not stop at knowing each other’s names, it continues to more information about themselves.
Tia was in the last year of her music graduate program at The Juilliard School. She was an African-American with French ancestry. She was 25 years old. The cafe was her favourite place to have afternoon tea with Matt, her boyfriend, who had been in a relationship with her for almost 11 months. The couple broke up two days previously and that gap led her to come to that cafe that day.
Sinan, 30 years old, held a Turkish passport and just about to run half of his 6-month course of F&B in a culinary school. Sinan used to work as a program developer in one of the telecommunication companies in Turkey for eight years before his passion in food and beverage seduced him to open his own culinary business in İstanbul.
Tia was cautious about sharing what troubled her to Sinan at first, but his sincere attitudes showed, made Tia slowly open, and share her troubles with him. Sinan really gave his ears to every word and shared smiles with every tear that dropped from Tia’s eyes who sparingly used the only the written tissue to wipe them.
Their two hours conversation was too short to clear all the problems at once, but enough for Tia and Sinan to declare friendship between them. For the rest of three months, they spent their spare times together and occasionally with their friends: sauntering around the neighbourhoods, visiting museums, running in the Fort Tryon Park, cycling in the Riverside Park along the Hudson River waterfront or just having a cup of coffee or a box of popcorn during a movie.
Those festive and the felicitous amity between them captured and rooted in the memory at the time Sinan went back to İstanbul and opened his culinary business not far from his mother and his stepfather’s residence, and Tia continued her life in the Big Apple. Apparently, more than a quarter of their lives were separating by the time zone, and exchanging voice messages or videos, were a little record of their lives that could be shared. They went online at times Tia was getting ready to bed while Sinan’s alarm was just being snoozed and he was about to brush his teeth, or when Sinan was preparing dinner and Tia was ordering lunch.
Living in the different hemispheres of the earth, lasted for a year and a half. One night, at midnight of Eastern Standard Time, Tia’s phone ringing with code +90 preceded the numbers followed. Tia woke from her sleep to hear a gleeful tone of wishing her a happy birthday from more than 8,000 kilometres away. She was thrilled by the fact that someone deliberately awoke her in the middle of the night to wish her happy birthday. They talked and laughed and had gone around thirty minutes and Tia missed Sinan more than before, which at the exact moment, Sinan opened up his feeling toward her.
It took less than a week for Tia to make a giant leap of her life. With the blessing of her parents, six months after the birthday call, she had been accepted at one of the orchestras and had her regular performing schedule in İstanbul. She also had assigned as an assistant lecturer of music at a music conservatory. She searched for a storage unit, packed her things, prepared all the papers required. She did all those things without Sinan’s knowledge. When all well prepared and ready, on a video call on their online time, she told Sinan everything, which was almost made him happily choke on his köfte.
It was a warm summer afternoon when Tia made her first steps on the European side of İstanbul. The flight was slightly delayed at the LaGuardia due to a technical problem. Sinan had waited for her at the arrival gate restlessly meandering and unstoppably looking at his wristwatch and just before any negative feelings ragged him, he saw Tia and Tia saw him. They both ran toward each other and let go off their restrained feelings in a long hug, and their stories resumed.
**
The rain had been pouring onto İstanbul since early morning. The weather banned a bunch of activities and made people wait. The traffic took the opportunity to get more crowded than usual. The thick clouds hindered the sunlight and made the sky gloom. The street dogs and cats found themselves shelters to stay calm and warm. Yet the town wasn’t dead. Laughter and chattering heard from every warm place with the steam of coffee and aroma of pastries.
Tia and Sinan got out of the car, ran against the rain to the terrace of Sinan’s cafe and entered the place that instantly took them to a world of gastronomy.
“I’ll check the kitchen,” said Sinan. Tia nodded. They shared a quick kiss and Tia went to the second floor.
“Hoş geldiniz, Tia Hanım,” greeted Tolga, one of Sinan’s employees.
“Hoş bulduk, Tolga,” replied Tia, smiling.
“What would you like to have, today?”
Tia thought for a second and ordered the café’s signature of simitte yumurta, one of the dishes that she always craved whenever she stopped by for breakfast, there. Tia was delighted by finding her favourite spot was unoccupied. It was just around the corner against a wall with an arc window displaying the building across with their chairs on the terrace, and the cobblestones street that soaked by the rain at the moment she was looking.
Tia took out A Strangeness in My Mind from her bag and went to the page she had marked. Two customers were enjoying their time, there. A mid of 20’s female was reading a magazine and seemed she fell into a quite interesting article while keep shovelling a piece of bread into the pan of pastrami eggs. A male of early 30’s was working with his laptop, didn’t care enough with his French toast and coffee, and scrutinised his eyes to the screen and some papers in his hand.
Tia was starting to read the chapter where the protagonist, Mevlut Karataş, decided to stop selling boza after the dog attack and the robbery the night before when Sinan joined her.
“I’m making a new dessert today. Let’s see what the customers would say.” He said.
“Hmm … do I get a hint about this dessert?” leaning forward and smiling, Tia asked.
Sinan smiled and reached out his hand touching Tia’s curly black hair that fell down over her shoulders. Raising both his eyebrows and tutting, Sinan remained smiling looking at Tia who understood well the answer.
“Okay … as long as I don’t get the bigger size or the more chocolate one.”
“My dessert, my rules,” said Sinan winking.
Tia pretended to give a look of look disagreement. Sinan loved to spoil her. Before, Sinan never let Tia pay for her meals whenever she came. Tia never liked it and due to this, they frequently argued. She wanted to be treated like other regular customers. Once she said she would hunt for herself another cosy café that served warm croissants and offered French ambience and music to spend her weekend with her book if Sinan kept prohibiting her for paying. Sinan knew for sure that Tia meant it. Under protest, he agreed. Then he came up with the ideas to create new dishes every now and then. And whenever he made them, he always made samples and collected feedback from the customers. Tia’s feedback was considered as one of the regular customers. Only, Sinan always made for her a little bigger, more topping, or more amount of every sampler. Tia couldn’t debate it.
They had their breakfast, talked, and laughed. They never ran out of topics to discuss, small topics, work, food, films, books, politics, the world, nature, even the universe. Forty-five minutes spent at their table then Sinan arose and kissed Tia’s head then headed back to the kitchen. He was just taking several steps when a woman and two kids arrived. The arrival was quite dramatic since the kids pretended that the second floor as a gigantic rabbit hole and they started to crawl under the table and obviously annoying the man with the laptop. The woman apologised and impatiently asked the children to sit. Sinan stepped in, also apologised to his customers, and welcomed his new guests. The children felt comfortable with Sinan’s greeting. Soon they become familiarised with each other. Sinan said something that made the children laughed. Tia watched the scene in admiration. She looked up to him for his ability to deal with varies kind of people; including children. Sinan offered a high-five to the children who gave it merrily then he got up right when Tolga came to take the order.
Tia took another sip of her coffee and reopened the thick book in front of her. She was just about to dive into the conversation between two sisters, Rayiha and Vediha, when one of the children, the boy, approached her table and gazed at her. Her appearance was quite different from common Turkish women or the European ones. Tia looked at him and smiled. The woman, who apparently the boy’s mother, neared and told his son to leave Tia alone. She apologised to Tia in moderate English telling her that her son tended to be curious with things or people surrounded him. Tia smiled and made sure that it wasn’t a problem at all. As soon as the woman led her son back to their table, Tia joined Rayiha and Vediha discussing the possibilities of Mevlut getting a new job with the help of Ferhat, a childhood friend of Mevlut, who happened to be Samiha’s husband, the youngest sister of Rayiha and Vediha.
Some more customers entered the second floor, a young man, and a young woman. They took the table next to Tia’s. Again, Tolga came to take their order. Tia was just about to turn the page when with the corner of her eye; she noticed the man held the girl’s hands and started to speak romantically and she noted the girl expressed uneasily, and moved her head, looking at the surrounding then tried to let her hands go, but the man didn’t let her. Tia avoided the inconvenience and didn’t want to eavesdrop anything, therefore, she took her headset and plugged it in her phone to listen to the chain of soft jazz music, while her mind went back to İstanbul in the mid-90s.
Tia couldn’t tell how many circles made by the minute’s hand since she was drowned into the love and life episodes amongst Mevlut, Rayiha, Samiha, Ferhat, and Süleyman. She saw the man rise from the chair and left the girl who started to cry. Confused, Tia removed her headset but before she got the chance to approach the girl to calm her, the other guests had done it. She looked over the window instead and saw the man walked into his car and left. When she put her eyes back to the girl, she saw the woman who was with a magazine sat next to her and half hugging her while the mother with the children tried to comfort her with her words and tissues. The early 30’s male was observing the crowd from his table with a look as if he was listening to conversations in a non-subtitle foreign language film that he never heard before. Tia saw Tolga was walking toward them. She asked for a glass of water for the girl. Sinan also went up and together with Halit, his pastry cook; they brought the new dessert creation to be tasted. Seeing what happened, he came to Tia’s table, took a napkin, and wrote a similar sentence that she still remembered. He blinked his eyes to her and smiled, and with a plate of dessert, he began his mission. The girl stopped sobbing for a second when she saw the napkin but then covering her face. The guests headed back to their tables and continued their previous activities. The desserts with a brief questionnaire distributed to every table. Tia examined hers then gave her disapproval look to Sinan who pretended not see. Her dessert was an inch higher than the others were.
At last the girl lifted up her head. Sinan gave the napkin. The girl looked at Sinan who gave her an understanding smile but then took the napkin hesitatingly. After a few seconds, Sinan passed the dessert.
“Küçük hanım, benim adım, Sinan. I’m the owner of the café.”
“Kusura bakmayın, Sinan Bey. I’m sorry if I broke the peace, here.”
“No, not at all. I’ve no problem with that,” said Sinan. “In the other hand, you might have a problem, right now, that’s why you are crying. But, hey, who doesn’t have problems?” added Sinan calmly. Tia watched it quietly. Her wonderment toward Sinan increased day-to-day. She wondered how he obtained his talent for dealing with people.
“Calm yourself, have this delicious dessert sample,” continued Sinan with a mirthful voice and rose from the chair to give the girl some space. “And if you’re willing, my girlfriend Tia and I are here to listen, in case you want to talk,” said Sinan unfeignedly introducing Tia. Tia smiled and greeted the girl who gave a shy nod. “If not, just take your time, pull yourself together, and probably some sceptics won’t agree, but I believe that time will heal.”
“ Çok sağ olun,” said the girl to Sinan also to Tia.
“Rica ederiz,” answered Sinan. “And I meant it about the tissue,” added him firmly but friendly. The girl tittered. Tia laughed softly. So did Sinan, nodding to both Tia and the girl before went back downstairs. He stopped by at the other tables, greeted the guests, and asked their opinions about the dessert. He seemed enjoyed every second, minute or two with them. Tia saw the girl next to her received a phone call. Tia threw her sight out of the windows that displayed the gradual shine from the sky. The tower and the zenith of Galata Kulesi spotted from her window and she saw it stood proudly welcoming the shy sunlight. The rain had stopped, not completely, but enough for the people to walk bareheaded. She was tempted to go back to “Mevlut’s life” when a girl came in and stormed to the table next to her. A relief sneaked in Tia’s heart knowing that the troubled girl was not alone. After Tolga served the girl’s order, Tia asked for a cup of Earl Grey.
A few minutes later, Sinan came back to join her. The café was crowded. The table of the young woman who had been reading a magazine had changed for a new customer. The mother with two children was cutting a burger into bites. The man with the laptop was talking on the phone. Another customer, a couple, headed to a table in the other corner. Downstairs seemed busier than the second floor. The freshly brewed coffee smelled out. Clattering dishes, the collision of plates, knives, and forks sent a good vibe to an empty stomach. Sinan was talking to Tia when the girl, Beren, thanked both of them and assured them that she was much better. They were relieved. She and her friend left the café. Both Tia and Sinan sighed and smiled at each other.
“How’s the new dessert?”
“Oh, as you can read on my feedback form, it’s delicious as usual. But I found it a little bigger. If only you can downsize it a little bit so it wouldn’t be too full,” said Tia teasing Sinan.
Sinan smiled. “We can manage it,” he answered. He looked at Tia softly. Tia looked at him back but soon bowed her head. She felt the blush on her cheek, which Sinan always loved. She wouldn’t hesitantly look at Sinan long whenever they have something to discuss or argue with, but she never could resist Sinan’s look when he showed his love like that. Sinan realised what he did and asked Tia to go with him.
“Let’s have balık ekmek.”
“Eminönü’ nde?”
Sinan nodded.
“You own a café. Why don’t you make your own balık ekmek?” questioned Tia.
“What? And miss the sea air and hovering seagulls? Uh … uh, not a chance.”
Tia agreed and they made their way out the café. Sinan made time to greet his customers and spent a few more seconds with one of his regular ones. Tia went down and headed to the cashier to pay then waited for Sinan at the door. She was talking to one of the waiters when Sinan came down.
“Kolay gelsin.”
“Güle güle.”
The rain had now stopped completely. Leaving some puddles on the road. They splashed every time a vehicle passed by. The couple decided to take a walk. The earthy smell formed in petrichor filled the air and sometimes the breeze tickled the skin. The sun started to warm the land. They walked with their hand intertwined into each other. Sometimes, they exchanged greeting with some people in the neighbourhood they know. When they arrived at the top of Kamondo Merdivenleri, they saw a group of English speaking women occupied the middle of the stairs near the plaque taking pictures. It was quite unwieldy for them to manage selfies. Tia whispered to Sinan and he went downstairs offering help. The ladies were very grateful even one of them who was elderly kissed Sinan repeatedly on the cheek like a mother kissed her son and made Sinan a trifle overwhelmed. Tia couldn’t help laugh.
The Camondo Stairs is one of the historical landmarks in İstanbul, designed in the Neo-Baroque and early Art Nouveau styles. Abraham-Salomon de Camondo, a member of the Camondo family, a Sephardic Jewish family who resided in İstanbul, funded the construction of the pedestrian stairway—which also has attracted tourists to take pictures—in the 19th century. Located at Bankalar Caddesi—the street where the financial activities and stock exchange used to be in the Ottoman era—the stairs leads the pedestrians up to another historical landmark, the Galata Tower. Its curvaceous-hexagonal shape resembles a river flowing downward from the hill. The stairs divided into three sections; the mid-section embedded a plaque as a reminder of the Camondo family who constructed the stairway. The central space of the staircase, between each section, there are stone planters. The staircase isn’t just different from other staircase, but it’s fascinating on its unique architectural design.
After a bunch of compliments given to the young couple, the tourists continued their walk up to the magnificent Galata Kulesi as so did Tia and Sinan strolled through the Galata Bridge, facing the busyness of boats coming and going to and off the ports and all the bustle around the water can hold.
“Abi, iki tane, daha az soğan, veribilir misiniz, lütfen?” said Sinan in the midst of the loud voices of the fish bread sellers. Tia sat on one of the wood benches beside the Golden Horn waterfront. Sinan came with the fish sandwiches and ayran.
“Teşekkür ederim.”
“Afiyet olsun.”
They enjoyed the balık ekmek as much as they enjoyed the blue sky after the rain. The seagulls hovered above them with their squeak accompanied the human voices under them.
“Ooh … one of the best,” said Sinan as he bit the bread. Tia smiled. She awed Sinan as a young food entrepreneur who very much enjoyed street food.
“Can I ask you something?” Tia asked after a sip of her ayran.
“Sure,” answered Sinan looking at her.” The look that made Tia felt bashful again.
Sinan smiled and threw his look to the water in front of them.
“How can you … be so good with people? I mean, when you’re dealing with people, you can easily gain their trust and they feel comfortable around you; like you were born with this gift.”
Sinan leant his back to the bench. He shook his head, “I never thought about this. But since you asked ….” Sinan thought for a second. “My stepbrother.”
“Your stepbrother?”
Sinan nodded. “Have I ever told you that my mother remarried after my father left us?”
“Yes, you have.”
“Well, my stepfather had a son. He was seven years older than I was. I was five years old when our parents remarried and my mother and I moved to my stepfather’s house. I never had a brother before and I was timid and scared. But, Ilyas, my stepbrother, made sure that I’d feel comfortable in many ways. He played with me. He included me when he played with his friends and looked after me. He carried me on his shoulders on our way home after winning the football. He was everything to me. The older we grew; I saw his warm-heartedness extended to other people. His friends asked him for advice as if he was a person who knew all the answers. I really looked up to him.”
Sinan was silent for a moment then looked at Tia who was listening to him. He took a deep breath. “He was one of the passengers on Germanwings Flight 9525, the one that crashed in French Alps in 2015.”
Tia gasped. Her eyes wandered catching the pain reflected in Sinan’s eyes.
“We were devastated. The loss I felt made me wanted to revive the legacy he left. I guess that it had become a curse and a gift in one, being good at people.”
“How grateful I am to have you in my life,” said Tia with love in her eyes.
“Seni çok seviyorum, Tia,” said Sinan, holding her hand.
Tia leant forward and kissed Sinan softly on the cheek as her response. She put her head on his shoulder. Sinan spread his arm and held her.
As a beautiful closure after the rain, a rainbow arched on the İstanbul sky covering the love, the zephyr, and all the voices of the noon.
*