A hand-illustrated essay on everything a glass of tea is actually holding.

Written by a Bosniak from Sarajevo who moved to Istanbul and found a city that felt like a distorted mirror of her own, this zine traces tea and coffee from the Sufi lodges of Yemen and the tea myths of China all the way to the kıraathane of Kadıköy. It's part memoir, part lightly-worn anthropology: childhood daydreams of underwater cities, an ancestor who left a village for Istanbul and came back the Grand Mufti, coffee getting banned and un-banned for resembling wine a little too closely, broke Janissaries opening coffeehouses to cover their salaries, a dragon-emperor stumbling on tea by accident, a monk slicing off his own eyelids so the plant could grow where they fell.

Underneath the history it's really about ritual and belonging — the third spaces where a city quietly argues with itself. The men-only teahouses, the Grand Bazaar's plastic-token tea economy and its unspoken hierarchy of who's allowed to order what, the Bosphorus tea gardens serving baklava next to San Sebastian cheesecake. Illustrated throughout in ink, watercolour and pencil.

For anyone who's ever felt more at home in a city over a cup of çay than they could explain.

26 Pages, A5, blue riso print