Tea with Shepherds

After lunch today, I was heading back to the office when I saw Judy and Devon on their way out.

“We’re going for a walk up the hill, wanna come?”

Of course I did. So I joined them for the walk up the hill that runs beside the one currently operational building on campus, till Zirve’s property ends. The border is marked by a rather imposing barb-wire fence, as if it were a prison, or a military base. On the other side of the fence, however, is idyllic pasture perfect for herds of sheep and goats to graze on. And that’s exactly what was happening.

We could see to our left one shepherd with his flock, tending them in the distance. Eventually, they came closer, and another shepherd with another flock arrived suddenly from the right. It was fascinating watching scores of sheep pour over the ridge not far from us, but which had blocked our view of their approach until now. As the shepherd approached, riding a donkey while talking on his cell phone, we saw a perfect photo opp.

Now the sheep were very near us, in fact directly on the opposite side of the fence a little to our right. So we went over, and while we were ooh-ing and aah-ing over the sheep, the shepherds started trying to talk to us. Turns out one of them spoke a little bit of English.

“Where are you from? What is your name?” he asked, and we answered, one by one.

We were discussing the freedom these shepherds must feel with their simple life and contrasting it with ours. The sheep surely can’t be as hard to deal with as a bunch of hormonal 18-25 year olds, right? These guys don’t have to worry about staying all day at work even if there’s nothing to do. And so on.

The shepherds would occasionally call their sheep with bizarre whoops and hollers, and I started thinking about John 10 in a whole new way.

Suddenly, “Çay istiyor musunuz?”

“Is he offering us tea?”

“I think so...”

“Okay,” we told him.

They start gathering the dead brushweed lying around. “Are they going to start a fire and brew it up right here?”

Turns out that’s exactly what they were going to do. They lit a fire with the dead stuff, pulled out a very old, very black teapot, and put it directly on top of the burning weeds. A few moments later, one of the men pulled out a glass - glass! - tea cup, and poured a small amount into the glass, then poured it out again - to sterilize the glass. He did this one more time, then handed me the glass, and proffered a jug of sugar with the small, silver teaspoons common to Turkey. He poured tea into the glass and I took a couple of spoonfuls of sugar.

It looked like there was only the one glass, so I started sharing it with Judy and Devon. As it turned out there was one more, so we were sharing two glasses between us.

“I think this is the best çay I’ve ever had,” Judy said. We all quickly agreed. “Maybe we should do this every day.” We all quickly agreed. And once again, Turkey proved to have bizarre, pleasant adventures in store where you least expect them.