Twenty past eight and the table still isn't finished filling up. Someone keeps waving the waiter over for one more small plate, cold beans in olive oil, smoked eggplant, something with walnuts I can't name yet and don't ask about. That's the rule here, I think. Order too much. Talk over the food. Let it get cold while you argue about something that doesn't matter.
The raki comes in a thin glass with a shorter glass of water beside it. You pour, it turns white, someone across the table tells me this is called lion's milk, and I write it down like I'll forget it otherwise. I won't. Some details stay without trying.
Behind us the fish market is closing up for the night, crates being stacked, a man hosing down the stone floor, the smell of brine mixing with grilled peppers from somewhere close. Beyoglu doesn't quiet down so much as it changes instruments. Daytime is shouting and scales and ice. Night is a clarinet warming up two tables over, then a drum joining in like it was always going to.
I think about how many of these tables I've sat at that weren't mine to begin with. Strangers order for me, I stop pretending to understand the menu, and somehow that's the whole point. My camera sits by the bread basket, untouched for now. It knows to wait until the light does something interesting, or until someone forgets it's there.
A woman two seats down asks where I'm from and I give my usual answer, a little bit of everywhere, and she laughs the way people do when they've heard that answer before from someone else at some other table. Saudade is a word for missing a place while you're still in it, and I feel it a little now, already, before I've even left. Funny how that works. The music gets louder. Someone refills my glass without asking. I let them.
