cezve
The copper pot is the oldest colleague I have. It has ruined exactly one manuscript, three weeks of notes under a wave of Turkish coffee, and it has started every working day since 2020. These entries are what gets decided while the foam rises: small permissions, Sunday calls, sentences I was not ready to type yet.
22 entries, newest first.
2026
Rain before the launch
· A wet Bishkek morning, small final edits, and the ordinary week that refuses to pause for pre-launch nerves.
When the Manuscript Outruns the Room
· A short note from the nearly finished stretch: when the book feels more solid than the chair, the cup, and the afternoon around it.
Small and Hers Again
· Jetlagged homecoming to Bishkek after two countries: the city shrinks back to scale, and summer writing finds its quiet edge.
A Name in the Declassified File
· The small, particular jolt of finding one real name that had only ever arrived secondhand, and what it costs to write near it.
The Kind of Man I Notice
· A Sunday call home leaves a chair in the middle of the room, and a quiet inventory of who becomes visible.
A Sunday call home
· Weekly phone call with my mother: weather, gentle pressure, and the subjects we circle without naming.
A week I did not write much
· A bad cold, a quiet desk, and the unglamorous decision to stop treating rest like a moral failure.
Six weeks of just this
· An honest account of a bad stretch: a chapter that would not cohere, a structure second-guessed into confetti, and the small breakthrough that finally arrived.
Glass and spring light in Leipzig
· Notes from the book fair: the great glass hall, a panel, readers who linger, and tram rides washed in early spring.
Desk, cezve, radio
· What a working day actually looks like in Bishkek: coffee in the cezve, a desk by the window, handwriting first, and the shortwave after dark.
2025
The registration office
· A morning spent on address paperwork, a tired clerk, and the particular relief of being waved through without joy.
Frankfurt halls
· Notes from the Book Fair: publisher meetings, a signing hour, sore feet, evening receptions, and imposter feelings handled dryly.
Holding the First Copy
· The first printed copy of my debut novel arrived this morning in Bishkek. I sat with the cezve and tried to believe the years had led here.
Still here, still writing
· High summer in Bishkek: heat, market fruit, the cezve, and the faint circling of something not yet named.
2024
2023
The Address Is Not Mine
· A broken archive page, a fourteen-dollar host, and the small humiliation of writing at an address with somebody else's name in it.
The layover that ate a day
· Eleven hours in an airport after a cancelled connection, a bag that wandered off, and the special boredom of hold music.
2022
Coffee on the Only Copy
· The cezve chooses the exact second I reach for a pen. Three weeks of notes meet Turkish coffee, then the laundry line.
Permission
· A week after the shop window: deciding, quietly, that this page can hold more of me than the careful public self.
2021
What the royalty statement actually says
· A thin quarterly statement, the math of a winter coat, and the particular unease of money that arrives in uneven lumps.
The flu week
· Four days in bed with a real, unglamorous flu. Fever, soup at the door, and boredom that outlasted the worst of it.
