Eight thirty-nine and the bazaar is already awake, though not yet loud. That comes later. Right now it's just the shopkeepers arranging their pyramids, saffron threads catching the light like something lit from within, sumac dark and dusty red beside it, dried rose petals curling at the edges of brass bowls.
The smell hits before anything else does. Cumin, cinnamon, something sweeter underneath, maybe the rose water they use in the lokum. A vendor sees me lingering near his stall and doesn't wait for me to ask. He just holds out a piece of Turkish delight on a small square of paper, powdered sugar dusting his fingers. I take it because refusing felt rude, and also because I was curious. Rosewater and pistachio. Grazie, I say, and he laughs like I've said something funny.
The light in here is strange. It comes down in shafts through the high windows, catching dust and steam and turning ordinary stone floors into something almost cinematic. I load the last frame of a roll before I even think about it, the shutter sound swallowed by the general hum of vendors calling out prices in three languages at once.
I think about my mother's kitchen in Sao Paulo, the smell of coffee and cardamom on Sunday mornings, how spice markets always seem to fold time a little. You could be anywhere. You could be nowhere. Istanbul insists on being specific though, insists with color and weight and the particular sound of brass scales clinking as someone measures out a hundred grams of dried mint.
I buy more than I need. Sumac I probably won't use for months. A small paper cone of rose petals that will sit in my duffel smelling faintly of somewhere else. This is how I travel, apparently. Buying things I don't need from places I don't want to leave.
