nargileh + chess.

When I first got to Istanbul someone exposed to me to a nargileh cafe behind a graveyard in the University district of Cemberlitas. It felt like a smoking room on a luxury liner from the early part of the century, probably right up to the class segregation.


Waiters would shuffle up and down the aisles stocked with pyramids of tea amidst shelves of Turkish academia. They'd put a glass down on your table when you appeared finished, making 1 lira tallies on your corresponding order sheet accordingly.


Assuming you obliged this gesture regularly, you could were welcomed to spend hours smoking a single pipe of nargileh. And we did, every day, for at least a couple hours.





Perhaps nothing is more conducive to chess.


Aspects of my genial subconscious are forever indebted to the Turk Ocağı.