Someone gave me a crate

Written in Ayvalik, October 2023. Typed up today.

The plastic crates were stacked in uneven towers along the edge of the stalls. Each one held something different — tomatoes, green peppers, a kind of fig I did not recognise. The woman beside me picked one up and pressed it into my hands.

Ayvalik in October was still warm enough that the market had spilled out of the square and down two side streets. I had been there five days. I stayed longer than planned.

She said something in Turkish, pointed at the crate, then turned and walked between the stalls. She was short, wore a brown cardigan over her dress, and moved fast for her size. I waited. The crate was heavier than it looked.

The market was loud. A man was selling olives from a bucket, scooping them into bags without looking up. Two boys pushed a handcart past my knees. Nobody seemed to notice I was standing still in the middle of everything. Once in Batumi I watched a dog do something similar — hold one spot, waiting for a person who never came back. That made more sense to me than this did.

A boy of maybe twelve appeared after ten minutes. He took the crate from my hands without a word, set it on the handcart, and wheeled it away through the crowd. The woman never came back. I never worked out what I was supposed to do with the figs, or whether I had done it.

That’s all I wrote down.