Fourteen twelve, and the studio smells like wet earth and something faintly metallic, the kiln maybe, somewhere in the back room. Avanos does this to you. A town built on a riverbank of red clay, generations of potters pulling the same material from the same ground since the Hittites were here first. I did not know that this morning. I know it now, because the man guiding my hands told me twice, like it mattered that I understood the weight of what I was making a mess of.
The wheel spins and my hands do not know what to do with themselves. Too much pressure and the clay collapses. Too little and it wobbles, refuses to center. He puts his hands over mine, presses down, says something in Turkish that I don't catch, but I understand the gesture. Slower. Always slower. My apron is ruined already. There is clay under my nails that will still be there tomorrow, I suspect, a small souvenir I did not pay for.
The light comes in low through a single window, catching the dust in the air, catching the wheel as it turns. My camera sits on a shelf by the door, strap coiled, lens cap on. It does not get a say in this one. Some moments are for hands only, and this is one of them, the film can wait its turn.
Outside, Avanos goes on without hurry. Someone calls to someone else across the street. A dog sleeps in a doorway like it has an appointment with nothing. I think about how many hands have sat where mine are sitting now, how the clay does not care whose fingers shape it, only that they commit. Devagar. My pot leans slightly to one side. The potter laughs, not unkindly. Perfect, he says. Now you understand.
