Hasan lit the fire before the petals arrived.
The damıthane was a low stone building set back from the road at the edge of the town, the walls thick enough that the interior stayed cool through the day's heat and cold through the night. He had come in the dark, an hour before the first delivery was expected, and had worked by the light of the single bulb above the door while he prepared the kazan and cleared the spent material from the previous afternoon's run. The cooling trough needed refilling from the hose beside the building. The collection vessel needed rinsing and setting in its position below the outlet of the serpentine.
He drove to the damıthane in the dark at this hour each morning of the season. The route from his house on the town's upper slope to the damıthane at the edge of the town below was fifteen minutes by the road, less by the direct lane that cut through the old quarter and rejoined the lower road near the building's track. He took the lane when the road was quiet, which it always was at this hour. The lane was unpaved — stone and packed earth, the surface uneven in the dark, his car's headlights catching the pale stones and the dark gaps between them. He had driven the lane so many times that he navigated it mostly by muscle memory, the steering adjustments for the lane's bends made before he consciously registered that a bend was coming.