Tea in the Garden of Sheki Kahn

"If Georgian culture could survive the Persians, the Turks, the Arabs, the Mongols, and the Russians it could survive McDonald's...perhaps."

                                          
If nothing else, Sheki has a very talented muezzin. The call to prayer at 5am was incredibly beautiful. His voice rose and fell in soft waves, not so much piercing the dark but flowing into it, like ink into black water. Awaken. Awaken. Prayer is better than sleep. Prayer is better than sleep. Sara did not agree or did not hear. She slept while I tiptoed around the ridiculous Jenga tower they called an inn.

I wrote on the porch as the sun nudged the mountains, and the roosters crowed, and the wild turkeys rustled, and the birds tested their songs, and the mist slowly faded. The air was cool, and I wore my thick striped shirt and shivered under it. With my notes and a few pages torn from a book all spread out on the table, I felt there as happy as ever in my life. And I was aware of the happiness.

Writing in the quiet almost-dark was so peaceful and productive. I felt, in those two hours, completely myself and furiously content.

When I finished writing, I ate leftover dumplings with my fingers and went out in search of coffee to wash them down with. A fool's errand. There truly is no such thing in the Caucasus. It's either a thimbleful of Anatolian concrete (only available after 5pm) or a sarcastic ice cream sundae. Is this what you wanted? Is this the cahfy? Do you like?

I suppose there was that Starbucks in Baku. But this was Sheki. Forget it, Jake, it's Shekitown.

                                           

Nothing was really open except a few sweet shops. (Why?) There was a place promising espresso, but it was locked tighter than Topkapi. A convenience store called 24Mart must have meant it had twenty-four items for sale when it was open. It was closed. Some hilarious long-legged chickens gorked around in the cobblestones and some regular chickens ate from a spilled box of berries.

The city was very beautiful, just... closed. A little pipe had cracked underneath the street and water burbled up with a pleasant kind of murmur. It trickled down the rocky path and into a little stream lining the main road. Last year, I read a book in Slovenia called "Suffled How it Gush" and I kept saying that in my head when I would notice the little burbles.

Went back to Sara empty-handed. She was awake and she offered me a miracle. There is, she said, a hotel down the mountain where they have "Western coffee culture" and they are open and they would be happy to serve us. She had done some careful research on the subject. I encouraged her to dress as quickly as possible. We took a taxi to save time.

                                           
And true to whichever helpful wiki she had consulted, they had it. The staff knew exactly why we were there. It was an interesting place, sort of fancy in a retro "Fly Pan Am Jets" kind of way, with Ace-shaped archways and long banquettes with soft cushions. The air begged to be filled with hookah smoke, the tiles begged to have dice thrown on them. It was like one of those James Bond parodies with Dean Martin.

We drank our lattes and I forced myself through a few more pages of that Azerbaijan book, locked in a strange battle with the author. 500 over-sized and uber-stuffed pages is this thing. Will I regret the time I spent with it? Is it pride that drives me on? We settled the bill, which was only a few manatees (the currency is the Azeri manat, and we were at this point calling the bills "manatees") and took a turn around the lower town.

The usual busy sort of mix of old women carrying flat breads from one construction site to another, large groups of older men in the park playing psychic backgammon, and young men eating bread at construction sites. A few stray cats. We beat it back upstairs for more of that mountain air and for a chance to see the Palace of the Sheki Kahn before we had to marshrutka on out of there. We had an appointment in Ganja, and we meant to keep it.

We asked a taxi to take us to the Palace. He flashed a golden smile, sped up the hill, and dropped us off at something called "The Palace Hotel."

                                                         
We shrugged and paid. As we made our way toward the actual palace, we were confronted with a familiar sight, an old lady in an EBAY hat. Ireet! She was just turning the corner at that very moment! and very happy to see us again. She shared the adventure of how she'd found a mattress in a hostel in which she was the only lodger. It's a palace, she said, and where are you going now? An actual palace, we told her.

Have you eaten, I am heading to Gagarin restaurant, have you eaten, and where are you headed?

There was, of course, the implication that she would like to join us, but we told her we didn't have time to pause for breakfast but that she would enjoy Gagarin's as we had and that we were amazed to have seen her again, that it was fate, and that we wished her luck. She released us, and we fled to the safety of a marvelous old stone hotel with a courtyard and an angry housemaid who chased us out. It had also been in Sara's research wiki.

It's a town of strange and marvelous hotels, none of which anyone was staying in on account of the off-season.

I had seen a wall arrow advertising the location of the Khan's Palace, so we headed that way. The road was closed to traffic on account of it being repaved, but we braved the tar and the steamrollers and followed the arrows to a sort of busted-up suburb of stony hill homes with aluminum gates.

Someone had vandalized a stone lion in a most amusing way, makeup and eyebrows. It reminded me of a scene in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe where Edmund draws on a statue with pencil. Oh, Edmund. Oh, Aslan.

Grapevines hugged the roofs and grapes of all colors lay in the dirt road. The approach to the Khan's Palace was a little... unorthodox.

                                              

At some point it began to feel ridiculous. We were tripping along broken pave stones through a weird warren of homes, but every now and again there would be a teasing little arrow, sometimes in English, sometimes in Azeri, promising the splendor of the Palace of Sheki Khan. And so we pushed on.

Some old men were setting up a tent for tea, and Sara drew their ire trying to photograph them. It made me laugh to think that Ireet's name was so close to "irate." I put that in the same category as "Suffled How it Gush," just a thing I kept repeating to myself.

We escaped the men and discovered, through a crumbling arch, a manicured lawn and... a pretty little building nicely restored and like something a Khan might live in. A samovar of tea suffled on a low stone wall, and a nice old woman offered us some. We said no thanks, and she ran off to get saucers and glasses. A younger woman came out to ask what we were doing there.

We came to see the Khan's Palace. Ah, and so you have, but this is the Khan's Winter Palace. It is much smaller and not so fully restored. But you are here. Will you come in? The actual palace is supposed to be an architectural marvel filled with treasure and treasures of design. But Sara had read about this one in the Coffee Wiki as well, and it made much more sense that this was what at the end of the hilarious dirt maze we had followed to get here.

The wrong palace! And no time to make the real one! Forget it, Jake, it's Shekitown. We had to see it through, so in we went. It was only a few manatees, in any case.

Inside, I sang Chaka Khan songs as I had long planned to do.

                                           

When we left, the old woman had set a table for tea. We very badly needed to get back to our room to pack to make our ride to Ganja, but there was something so pitiful about the situation our hearts were moved to try and have a few sips.

So, Sara sat for a while in the single chair provided, but the cups were empty and the old woman wasn't anywhere to be seen, so we thought about leaving (and we really needed to). But then we heard a grinding noise, and grandma was dragging a bench over for me to sit in.

So, I went over to take it from her, and she went back somewhere behind the palace. So, Sara and I sat at the table with our empty glasses and.... more time passed.... no tea.... no old woman.... and Mahmoud was going to give our stuff to Ireet to sell on Ebay if we weren't out of the room by noon

So, we tossed some coins down and made a break for it.

Racing through the dirt maze, slipping on the grapes, dodging the old men, sending our regards to the Joker lion, ruining the newly lain asphalt, ducking under the windows of Gagarin, splashing through the gush, and safely to our room.

We packed, bid farewell to this peaceful place and fled our crimes in a hired Mercedes. Our next stop would be a place called Ganja, our last stop in Azerbaijan before the train to Georgia. We desperately prayed the taxi wasn't taking us to the Winter Bus Station.