“How are you?” I whisper, and am taken aback when she replies in her usual cheery fashion. Slowly it dawns on me that we're sitting in blackness not because she needs the dark to shade her eyes or even because the Turkish Electricity Distribution Company (TEDAŞ), the local power generator, has cut off the electricity but because there's something wrong with the light socket. “It's very romantic,” I venture, keen to be positive, but just as I say that we notice the bulb starting to slip its moorings whereupon the neighbor phones her husband and demands that he return from the tea house to sort things out immediately.“We've got visitors,” she says snippily.
“I'm hardly a visitor,” I murmur, since really I feel more like a piece of the furniture.
“Nonsense, we haven't seen you for weeks. Of course, you're a visitor,” she says, before turning her attention to the weight I've gained since last we met. In the past, this so utterly un-English readiness to comment adversely on my appearance used to have me gritting my teeth with suppressed rage. Now, however, I know that it's coming, and have a stockpile of my own jibes ready to fire back.
The neighbor's son struggles upstairs with the tea tray and enough cake and biscuits to guarantee I'm not the only one who will have acquired a few extra kilos before the night is out. His great-grandmother, a bird-like little thing in her 90s, joins us on the couch, which means that there are now four generations of the family gathered together beside me in the dark.
Inevitably, the conversation focuses on the subject of ill health, the neighbor's, her mother's and my own, although great-grandma can't hear well enough to join in. Sadly, we tot up that between us we are currently sharing three dodgy knees, a slipped disc and an aching breast. “To the rubbish bin with us immediately!” is the standing joke. “But only between nine and 10 o'clock at night,” I remind them, since these have been the designated hours for garbage disposal since the spring elections.
Just as the conversation is trickling out, husband returns and discovers that there's nothing he can do to get the bulb working again. A temporary alternative is rigged up, and by its glow, I see that he's arrived with large bunches of what looks from a distance like mistletoe but turns out to be chickpeas fresh from the garden. Like walnuts, they're eaten green here which is not a taste I'm ever likely to acquire. Besides, I'm still struggling with the sugar high brought on by an overdose of cake and biscuits.
It's stiflingly hot in the room because the window is jammed. In any case, my neighbor insists that she needs 40 degree Celsius temperatures to help with her convalescence. As evenings go, it was one to remind me that not quite everything has changed in Göreme. But it's late, and I crave something savory, so I make my excuses and leave.
Pat Yale lives in restored cave-house in Göreme in Cappadocia. 
