Kahveyorışuz!

As we prepared to enter the Harem at Dolmabahçe, the security guard looked us over and meaningfully importuned, “Kahveyorışuz.”

I was trying to figure out if this was a rare subjunctive imperative first-person plural form of a verb for drinking kahve (coffee), when I realized he was pointing to a bin full of new, blue shower caps. Cover your shoes, not kahveyorışuz. We donned the foot-covers and trod lightly on the polished floors of the harem.

This is not Dolmabahçe Saray in the photo, but Ortaköy Mosque, a little farther up the Bosphorous. Where, instead of covering your shoes, you take them off (and kahveyürıhed, instead). That’s the Bosphorous Bridge, connecting Europe and Asia, in the background.