From the world of TEZGÂH
Mr. Fehmi spent forty years inspecting weights and measures, then began keeping notes on street stalls. Now he cannot taste. The first six pages of his notebook are here. Some questions are answered on the pages; the real one is not.
This notebook is not inside the game; it lives in the game's world. The stalls, the apprentice–journeyman–master ladder and the six districts of the Golden Horn are the same.
Simit, eighty grams, exact. It tastes of paper again; illness took my taste and left me the scale. Under the baker's weighing pan sat a cloth pouch: red powder, and a note. 1/6, the six written with a curled tail. The baker said he'd seen nothing. Forty years an inspector: liars look at the pan. He never did.
Güllü has joined me, sixteen, an apprentice. She called my scale a museum piece and took over tasting; I just frown, she says. I frowned. The sweet seller gave me a second pouch: a lady came before you. 2/6. My wife Hatice used to say: five tastes are everyone's, the sixth belongs to the stall.
In the market queue one woman was always a step ahead; any customer she reserved for herself, nobody else could serve. Güllü whispered, "Kalfa Seher." Seher held out the pouch herself. 3/6. "Usta Ferhat's word. Stall by stall, in order." I had not heard Ferhat's name in twenty years. Güllü looked at me. I gripped my scale.
Seven people in the queue. Güllü counted each one's patience under her breath, lips moving: "Three rounds and they're gone, three rounds and they're gone." Nobody left. "That's a good stall, uncle." The fourth pouch, 4/6, sat inside a soup spoon. I laughed. First time in forty years; I wrote it down.
I laid the five pouches on the table and weighed them: five grams each, to the grain. That is Ferhat's measure. Hatice's older brother. After our wedding he and I fell out, over a recipe. The last stall is in Kâğıthane, at the festival, they say. Güllü has already asked about ferry times.
The last stall stands at the festival's far end, lamp lit, nobody behind the counter. On the pan, a hot plate and the sixth pouch, empty. Under it a folded note; the six has a curled tail. Hatice's six. Hatice died four years ago. I sat opposite. No taste. A smell: red powder, warm bread. Note unopened.
The note has not been opened. The stalls know the rest.
