When Tim ordered a beer at a tea cafe near the Spice Market -- and, granted, in the shadow of a mosque -- it was brought to him in an opaque glass and announced loudly as a cappuccino. I have to admit that the beer foam did look like milk froth. We debated the need for secrecy. After all, a hawker enticed us to the cafe by pitching beer. If the establishment had moral qualms about serving quaffs, it shouldn't mention beer on the menu, orally or otherwise. We concluded that it was probably more about not offending the more conservative clientele. Indeed, none of our fellow patrons, many of whom wore head scarves or ran off to the mosque after the call to prayer, were having alcohol. But then again, no one was having cappuccino either. So we were, um, obvious.
But the stares weren't as evident as when we sat down for tea in the bazaar area of Erzurum. In the West, drinking tea is a non-gendered equal opportunity, but in the East, it is more reminiscent of the old boys club. I felt like Tim was the stupid guy who brought a girl to his friend's stripper-filled bachelor party, and I wasn't there to show off my G-string. Once again, the proprietors cheerfully served me, but they weren't as inviting with the refills as they were with Tim. I tried to be casual as I sucked down my spot of tea. They are small glasses, so we got out of there quickly, but I felt extremely disconcerted, so much so that I didn't mind wasting four hours at the supermarket and train station instead of wandering more around the city.
Surprisingly enough, it was an American -- or so he said -- and not a Turk that made us feel most suspect. As we headed in to check out Istanbul's Sirkeci Station, once a hub on the Orient Express, a pedestrian asked me, in English, where I was from. Trying to keep up my resolution to be more open to talking to strangers while traveling, I answered him. We chatted for a good 15 minutes before he asked us if we wanted to join him at a whirling dervish show at the station that night. I didn't mind talking or even going to the show, but I didn't want a third wheel for the night, so I mustered up as much diplomacy as I could to extricate us from the dialogue.
It was only after we parted ways that Tim expressed doubts about the numerous coincidences that came up in the conversation. Okay, so he said he was on business in Ankara -- which we were planning to visit in a few days -- but taking a break in Istanbul. Believable. He said he worked in counter-terrorism and lived outside DC -- where we used to live. Still believable. He said he had recently visited Berlin -- which we just visited in December. A little scary. He said he had traveled as a Fulbright scholar -- which Tim applied for last year. Getting scarier. He asked Tim if he was a international politics major -- which he is, well, international relations anyway. Definitely strange. He said he had taken a tour of Israel where he had visited the Interdisciplinary Center in Herzliya -- which is about a mile from our house. What the hell?!?
The most disconcerting part, though, was all the information he got out of us: our current location, our previous homes, our hometowns, our professions, our educational backgrounds, our previous travel, and our current itinerary. The near-cross examination almost made me feel I was worth being interrogated. Of course, we had no need to worry because our intentions were pure. We were heading to the East, but with no malevolence. In fact, we managed to avoid an outbreak of fighting in Kars province, in which a Turkish soldier and five PKK members were killed, two days after we left. We dodged another bullet, literally, by skipping our treehouse stay in Olympos. The morning of the day we were scheduled to arrive, two nearby hostel owners engaged in a shootout that wounded a dozen guests. And still, this guy made us feel suspicious. But if you ask me, inviting two strangers to attend a show where men in fezzes and dresses twirl around to honor Allah is much more eyebrow-raising.
