“Yeah, but Turkey,” I reply, and she nods.
While the kids would swim in the neighborhood water park, I’d order this unconventional poolside lounge fare. Paper-thin circles of yufka dough are seared atop a large, round griddle; filling is then added and pressed into a half circle and folded again in thirds to create a triangular pocket. It’s Turkey’s answer to a French crêpe. In the urban areas of Istanbul and Izmir, you can find trendy g?zleme toppings like orange zest, walnut, and smoked salmon served on a busy street corner, the line of hip, hungry patrons wrapping the block.
Nothing is as quintessentially Turkish as iskender kebap, named after its nineteenth-century inventor, ?skender Efendi; it’s as commonplace as barbecue in Texas. Tonight, we take the kids to a restaurant with nothing on the menu but iskender kebap.
We walk through the doors, and the restaurant is packed with boisterous families. It’s a school night, and several kids wear school and soccer uniforms. IKEA is next door, and there is a sea of blue bags slung over chairs. A waiter cleans a booth, leads us to it, and sets down one menu. There is iskender kebap, there are sides of fries, and there are drinks.
“Iyi ak?amlar,” the waiter says. “Ne yemek istersiniz?”
Kyle looks at me. “Well, I guess our choices are iskender or iskender.”
“I think we should order iskender,” I say. The waiter looks at me.
“Iskender kebap alabalirmiyiz,” I say.
“Tamam. Aile i?in?” he says, pointing to all of us. One for all of us?
“Um . . . evet,” Kyle says. Why not?
A few minutes pass, and the waiter returns with a colossal platter of iskender kebap, sizzling strips of thin meat piled high on top of chunks of flatbread soaked in tomato sauce and yogurt. I can’t imagine us eating all this.
A younger waiter approaches with a ladle and tureen and asks, “Tereya???” Would we like butter?
“Evet, evet,” Kyle answers. The boy dips the ladle in his tureen and pours bubbling melted butter over our meat. The gold liquid crackles. Before we can stop him, he pours a second round.
“Daha?” he asks, ready for a third helping.
“Hay?r, hay?r!” I say, covering the platter with my arm. If he pours it again, he’ll sear my skin. The meat is swimming in butter, intermingling with the tomato sauce and tangy yogurt.
We pass out forks and dig in.
“Whoa,” Tate says after she swallows. “This is really good.” She has forgotten the taste of this.
“Mm-hmm,” Kyle answers, mouth full.
I don’t like gamey meat in the States, but I love lamb here—somehow, the nostrily punch of wet earth found in lamb meat feels more apropos on the streets of Turkey. It’s grilled for hours vertically on a spit, and its juices marinate each slice cut fresh per order. The taste is fresh, simple, hot, and succulent, with just a hint of cumin. The sweetness of pureed tomatoes and the surprising tang of cold yogurt is an impeccable pairing with lamb. The bread is seared directly on a grill, burned with perfection.
We order honey-sweet baklava for dessert and wonder why we ever left this country. We lick the platter clean.
Several years ago, two-year-old Tate pitched a fit one afternoon crossing the Aegean Sea bay, stamping her foot in protest on the ferryboat taking us to the north side of town for a playdate. The sun striped the deck and sparkled the gray-green waves; seagulls circled and scooped the water for lunch. The weather was sublime and I had successfully used my Turkish to navigate the two of us onto a bus and then the boat. I was in my second trimester with Reed, so queasiness had quelled and ferryboats were feasible at last. Tate was splayed on the deck at the front of the boat, throwing a toddler tantrum. I sat on the bench and ignored her, denying her attention so as to defuse the outburst, employing my remaining energy to ignore the staring multitude of commuters.
A cayc?, the man who serves tea to ferryboat passengers, rushed over and offered her the last thing I wanted her to have: a sugar cube. Turkish toddler parenting called for more indulgence, a more laissez-faire way than my American style; plus, her blonde hair and blue eyes granted her local adoration. I snatched the sugar cube out of Tate’s hand before she could pop it in her mouth, her tantrum ensued, and I paid the well-meaning cayc? for a tulip-shaped glass of ?ay. It wasn’t any better than a sugar cube, but I let my two-year-old have a sip. And another. And another. She loved tea. She left her tantrum on the ferryboat deck.
There might not be dessert after a Turkish meal, but there will always—always—be ?ay. In a diminutive, handleless, tulip-shaped glass, you lift it by the rim, careful not to burn your fingers, and slurp as a sign of satisfaction. Some say leaving the teaspoon inside the glass signals a call for seconds, and resting it facedown across the top means you’ve had enough (typically after thirds). Adding two sugar cubes is normal, though I personally take mine black, much to the chagrin of Turks (and Albanians; ?ay—or ?aj, as it’s spelled in Kosovo—is just as essential to daily life there).
Black-leaf tea from Trabzon or Rize along the Black Sea is best, brewed loosely in a double-decker kettle over a gas stove. Pour a few tablespoons of concentrated tea into your tulip glass, fill the rest with the boiling water, and let sugar cubes dissolve with a clink-clank swirl of the teaspoon. Then sip. It’s chock-full of caffeine, but it’s culturally appropriate to drink it at ten in the evening.
When ?ay no longer stifles your yawns, you’ll tap off with a whole clove, sucking the flavor clean off the seed. This cleanses the palate, freshens your breath, and tastes like Thanksgiving. Pop a clove in your mouth, and suck until the flavor dissipates, then put the remnant spice on the saucer. Do it over the years, and it’ll taste like Turkey.
Near the end of our week, we make a spur-of-the-moment trip a few hours east to see some ancient ruins. We’d been to Ephesus, Pergamon, and Smyrna while we lived in Turkey, and we want to check off a few more sites. If we swing through Philadelphia en route to Laodicea, we’ll have six of the seven ancient churches mentioned in St. John’s book of Revelation to our name. All of them are near Izmir.
We dash north to Manisa and drive by the scant Philadelphian ruins, which are now sandwiched between two modern apartment complexes; then we veer southeast to Laodicea, where the archaic city displays a vast acreage of crumbling marble columns, derelict roads, and piles of stone blocks. While we’re here, we visit cotton-white calcified pools of Pamukkale and the ancient ruins of Hierapolis, a spa town from the Roman Empire.
The kids play tag next to ancient marble columns while Kyle plays with his camera and I journal.