In Turkey it is Illegal to Smoke Inside

In Turkey, things are different. For instance, the English Department has it's own tea runner. His name is Maruf, and he sports a unibrow like it is the only thing keeping his forehead warm. Maruf does nothing except deliver chai tea to anyone who calls. The extension is 3262. I know it because to every office I visit, Maruf comes at least twice while I am there, to present the tea. Even when I tell the professor, "No more tea, please. My bladder just painfully ruptured," still Maruf comes.

Another thing: students don't show up to the first week of class. I'll walk around the department, taking breaks from reading comic books during my office hours, and I find all the professors in their rooms. Why, I ask. Because the students didn't show up. Is this common? Are you outraged? No, it's expected, they say, and then dial Maruf for more chai.

One of the reasons they drink so much chai, I think, is because smoking was recently, as of last year, banned indoors. Smoking is very big in Turkey, like Mad Men big or the planet Jupiter big. Everyone does it, but there's beginning to be a backlash. You can't smoke indoors now. In theory, at least. Many times, other professors will produce cigarettes and say something like, "It is good for the economy," or "There is too much oxygen in here." They look sheepish, but they still open a window and sigh into a cigarette.

This is what we do, because there are no students. I am told that next week, which will be the second week of classes, students will start to come, and the smoking will decrease. We will still drink chai, they tell me. They have to pay Maruf for something.

Hassan, the department head, is an old man with skin that is almost orange and a bright white mustache. He is nice like a grandfather on a sitcom, and he doesn't smoke cigarettes. He smokes a pipe - the greatest pipe I have ever seen. It is carved out of white marble, with a bowl that you can fit two fingers into. The outside of the bowl is marked like a little brick bowl, and it is held by a huge and magnificent dragon claw. That's right, a dragon claw, like the ones used for piercing steel armor and hoarding gold. Hassan lit it while facing the window, then turned to me and said, "In Turkey, it is illegal to smoke inside," by which he meant, "I run this mother."