Invited in for tea

We were in Harran and was walking to fields and looking at the more local livings.  We reached the resident areas and found ourselves in a dead end.  We were tired and was looking for a place to sit, rest, and have some tea.  Firat, our friend and tour guide of the trip was up front talking to some kids, asking them for directions.  So, when I saw a lady I asked her in my horrible Turkish “Nerde çay var?” (Where tea has?) She gestured into her home.  After consulting with others we accepted the offer.

In the fairly nice house was a large room with floor, pillows, and a TV.  Two older   women, an older man and two younger women and a mid-age women sat on one side of the room, while we sat along the other side.  As we sat and sipped çay, we made small talk with the family, well more like Cat speaking in Arabic and Firat in Turkish.  Apparently this family spoke a different accent than Cat’s Damascus, Syrian. Cat distinguishes their accent as Iraqi Arabic.  We learned that the older man had two wives, the older woman and the mid-age lady.  The kind lady who invited us in had four daughters.

I noticed that the two older women had these tattoos on their chins and lips with the shapes of triangles and dots…

Somewhere in the conversation, the old gentleman asked us how we got there.   We told him we took a dolmuş.  He asked if the driver was fat, and we said yes.  He immediately said that that is his son.  What a coincident.  I guess there are not too many people in the village. :)   His son ended up driving us back on a private trip, but since it isn’t right in the business to take a private load of people, we had to get on his van from a discrete place.  He charged us the same, but at least we got the whole mini-bus to ourselves.

It was really nice to meet them and for them to have us in their homes, again hospitality!  And of course it is always interesting to learn about the polygamy practice.