Confidence is a funny thing.

Yesterday I took the Istanbul metro for the first time in order to reach a kebabi that I had been recommended to try. Trips like that are full of unknowns. First, an untrodden route to the station. Then, the litany of onboarding tasks: pilot the machine from Turkish to English, purchase a metro card, fight with the machine to accept your currency like you’re an overzealous dinner date insistent on paying. Now, confirm the correct line, wait uncomfortably in the crowd, squeeze on board. When you arrive at the final station you are intimately familiar with the name of each stop you’ve passed; you’ve double checked them all against your map to ensure you haven’t missed your destination, haven’t somehow gone off in the wrong direction.

When I got off the tram I furtively got my bearings and, through the clamor of people, cars, and trams, continued the short walk to the restaurant. It was easy to identify. But what a cacophony! Hosts, waiters, and guests intermingled in a bustling mass around streetside tables. Pantomiming a request for a single seat got me a chair within a group of smoking locals loudly enjoying their meals and each other’s company. The menu was a single folio with six items, each named in Turkish and helpfully complemented with photos, but this proved unnecessary because within moments of being seated a man appeared from the throng carrying a stack of plates - a physical display of all the appetizers offered. Is this how I would order? A cautious point at a plate of spicy tomato paste made it mine. I inferred the beverage policy from the stack of unclaimed plastic water cartons at the center of the table, though with some hesitation. Choosing my sauce apparently signified my readiness and the entree arrived in the hands of a different waiter without me having to order. It wasn’t hard to understand how to eat it — two long strips of metal-skewered kebab sat under folds of a thin wrap. At first I neatly removed individual pieces of meat with my fork before putting them delicately on a neatly made bed of tomato sauce and the accompanying onions. I did look around for validation that I was on the right track and learned from watching my table mate how to wrap an entire chunck of metal skewer and meat around the wrap and pull to simplify the process. Good god was it delicious. As I ate, I felt a lingering awareness that I didn’t really know what I was doing. How do they know what to charge? This was answered by watching a fourth man silently count and jot notes over the heads of nearby diners. With the menu gone, how do I ask for dessert? This answered by another floating server with plates in each hand. Will they charge me for the half-empty cola that preceded my place at the table? Will I know? How will I adjudicate without speaking the language?

The food was my deliverance. It was too delicious not to enjoy and too simple to worry much about. By midway through the first skewer I was enjoying myself, and the people watching soon shifted from situational assessment to fun curiosity. I could see that the tables spilled across the walkway, extending the domain of the waitstaff considerably. Not less than 3/4 of the guests smoked. The servers were hurried but not harried and often stopped to trade a laugh with a guest. In no time at all, my plates of sauce and meat were entirely clean and cleared, replaced by the dessert I had wondered over. It took only three attempts to understand I was being asked if I’d like tea with it, and no difficulty at all to say yes. The sweet capstone of the meal was perfect and drinking the tea slowly had me fully settled into experience. When it came time to pay I had no idea if I had been charged for the coke, but at a full bill of roughly $10 I didn’t care. I laid the cash on the dish, gestured refusal of change, and left, too soon, back into the unknowns of the city.

Today I went back. While I sat there for the second time I reflected on how the entire trip had been transformed in a day. I needed no map to the station. My only frustration with the tickets was practiced impatience from the line moving slowly in front of me. I nonchalantly read on my phone aboard the tram until I reached the correct stop, and I confidently walked the few blocks to the kebabi, where I claimed my own seat and unflinchingly helped myself to a water as I waited for the food to arrive. Along the way, the crowds seemed to recede, the clamor to pierce less, the blocks to shorten. Again, the meal flew by, somehow even faster this time. And again I sped off into the city, looking for the unknown.