Kahveci Mustafa, "Mustafa the coffee-keeper", owner of a tiny coffeehouse in the narrowest lane of the Grand Bazaar (Kapalıçarşı). He knows everything that happens in the bazaar and spreads none of it. He is the heart of the plan that shuts down Erlik's gambling den with a tea stove, and it is he who gives "Batak" its name.
- Homeland
- The narrowest lane of the Grand Bazaar; a coffeehouse with three tables
- Lineage
- His father and his grandfather were coffee-keepers too
- Emblem
- A copper cezve, a thick mustache
- His invention
- The saying "whoever breaks their word goes under"; the name of Batak
- His rule
- Whoever walks through the door for the first time drinks their first tea from him
- In the palace
- The Kahvehane
Come, sit down, young man. Coffee or tea?
Who he is
Mustafa's shop is tiny: three tables, one stove, one shelf of cups. Yet everything that happens in the bazaar finds its way to those tables sooner or later. Who borrowed from whom, who has fallen out with whom, who got married. Mustafa hears everything and spreads nothing; but if you ask, he will tell you. The first time he sees Asena he is not afraid; he holds out a simit to her.
His path in the story
It is he who tells Aybars about the Golden Dice Inn and about Rıza Bey, who has lost everything there. For a week now Rıza Bey has come every morning and ordered a tea, and he neither drinks it nor pays for it; and Mustafa does not ask him to.
When the plan is laid, it is he who asks the most important question: "Who's going to brew the tea?" The answer is himself. He carries his stove into the courtyard of the Furriers' Han and brews the finest tea in the world without taking a coin from anyone. The scent of that tea drifts all the way down into Erlik's cellar. The courtyard of forty tables becomes the first Kahvehane.
In the Paper Palace, when someone asks what becomes of a player who cannot keep their word, he twirls his mustache and laughs: "He sinks, sir. Like his ship." In Turkish, to sink is batmak, and the game's name, Batak, is born of that laugh. Spades Trump is the one he loves best; it is quick, it is sharp.
On the way north he fills a sack with his finest beans: "Is there coffee in the north?" "No." "Then I'll have to bring it."
In the palace
The Kahvehane is the first hall of the palace, and his stove there never goes out. The seventh article of the palace custom bears his name: Whoever walks through the door for the first time drinks their first tea from Mustafa. The cezve passes to his son, and to his son's son. That is why the beginners' tables are the warmest tables of all; the first tea still comes from that stove.
