At the same time there's a sweet smell of bonfire in the air, which, when I open the gate to investigate, turns out to be coming from a fire my neighbors have lit right next door and round which they are huddled together with an extraordinary assortment of pots, pans and plastic buckets. I wander over to investigate, expecting to find that they're making pekmez (grape molasses), but on this occasion discover instead a vast cauldron filled with slices of apple and quince that are bouncing about in a bubbling, boiling, geyser-like brown syrup. They're making fruit conserve, which is not something I've seen before. “Where did the quinces come from?” I ask them. Apples I've certainly seen growing in the orchards, but quinces? Supposedly stuffed quince was once a specialty of the Nevşehir area, which is not to say that I've spotted many such fruits growing on local trees.
“From the garden, of course!” says my neighbor with a look of bemusement on her face.
“Do you add sugar?”
“No, just pekmez,” comes the reply. “It's all natural.”
My neighbor scoops some piping hot fruit into a bowl so I can sample it, and just as she's doing so my ex-landlord speeds by on his motor-scooter. He's a great one for tasting whatever's on offer and slams on the brakes so that he too can come and gaze into the cauldron. The next thing I know, he's plonked down on the doorstep spooning hot fruit into his mouth with relish. He comes with a bushy white beard and a patriarchal air. For a moment, I could almost imagine that I've slipped back into long-ago Göreme, and he's a passing pasha laying feudal claim to a share in his tenants' labor.
Beside the cauldron the ashes have been piled up and a small pottery jug inserted into the middle. My neighbor lifts the stone that's serving as a lid. “Düğün çorbası [wedding soup],” she says with an anticipatory smacking of her lips.
Strolling into town, I bypass other huddles of village women busily stripping the seeds out of plump yellow pumpkins. Elsewhere people are chopping wood and bundling logs into piles so large that they threaten to conceal entire buildings behind them. As evening draws in, the neighbors are still gathered around the cauldron, but when I take another peep inside, the fruit has been fished out and only the pekmez remains. Three generations of the family are standing around the fire, feeding vine twigs into the flames. It's an oddly reassuring sight, a reminder that although Göreme often seems to be fast-forwarding into urban modernity, some of the old ways of doing things are still managing to hold their own. Today I doubt that there's any need for people to conserve fruit, or make their own pekmez, or even shell the pumpkins themselves, since all these items can be found on sale in the shops. Still, there was always a camaraderie about the protracted preparations for winter, and people seem reluctant to let that go. Long may that stay the case.
Pat Yale lives in a restored cave-house in Göreme in Cappadocia.
Benzer Haberler 
