According to Turkish lore, a camel’s idea of heaven is to die and wake up in the North Pole. Conversely, a camel’s idea of hell is to wake up in the desert getting raped by a polar bear.

So when a Turkish man swears, “May you be re-incarnated as a camel in the desert being raped by a polar bear!” you can be sure he isn’t pleased with you.

###

The other night, Ozge and I decided to order in. It was Sunday, and we were feeling lazy, watching old Seinfeld episodes on the Internet. We’re big Seinfeld fans, and recently started watching the whole series from the first season on.

Anyway, there’s a website where you can order from a variety of different restaurants. We settled on burgers, and clicked on the option that allows you to pay by debit card. Meanwhile, we continued watching Seinfeld.

Half an hour later there was a buzz at the door. The delivery boy was standing outside, with the food. When we handed him the card, the delivery boy looked abashed. He claimed that he didn’t know we were going to pay by debit card, that he didn’t have the card scanner on his person, and that he could only take cash.

“But we don’t have any cash here,” Ozge said.

The delivery boy suggested we go with him to the restaurant if we wanted to use the debit card.

Ozge flatly refused.

“If we had wanted to go to the restaurant, we wouldn’t have ordered delivery,” she said, somewhat exasperated.

Finally, the delivery boy gave in. He handed us the food, and said he would return in the morning.

“That was strange,” I said.

First of all, we didn’t have any cash in the flat, which is why we were paying by debit card. Secondly, we had specified in our order that we were paying by card, so it shouldn’t have come as a surprise. Finally, as Ozge told me, the website warns customers against delivery boys insisting on cash payments only.

“It’s probably a scam,” I said. “He was probably afraid that if we used the card he wouldn’t get a tip, so he pretends like he doesn’t have a card scanner.”

“But I always include a tip when I use the card,” Ozge said. “So he shouldn’t have worried about that.”

Still feeling a bit confused, but hungry, we put the matter aside, retired to the living room and had dinner. We watched some more Seinfeld. The episode was “The Pony Remark.”

Suddenly there was another buzz at the door. It was the delivery boy again. We thought he had managed to “locate” his card scanner, but no – he had more food! He was standing in our doorway with a bag full of fresh lahmacuns.

“No, not for us!” we said.

“Not for you?” the delivery boy seemed genuinely confused. “Number 52?”

“Downstairs,” Ozge said, pointing the way.

“Ah, pardon,” the delivery boy said, and waved good-night somewhat sheepishly before going down the stairway.

“Well –“ Ozge said, shutting the door.

“This is all starting to feel like a Seinfeld episode,” I said.

###

Actually, it did feel like an episode of Seinfeld. We could call it, “The Delivery Boy.” Ozge and I began imagining the scenario. Which character would it happen to – Jerry, George, Elaine or Kramer? And how would they react?

“Well,” Ozge said. Kramer is her favorite character. “If it were Kramer, he would probably move out of the building, or hide from the delivery boy instead of paying the bill.”

“What about Elaine?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” she said. “Elaine would just probably get angry.”

“George would probably want to go to the restaurant headquarters and have an angry meeting with the boss,” I said.

What about Jerry?

“Oh, it probably wouldn’t happen to Jerry,” Ozge said. “He always has cash on him.”

###

In the morning, I went to an ATM, withdrew some cash and left it with Ozge to pay the delivery boy if and when he showed up.

At the school, I told my colleagues about our strange encounter with the Delivery Boy.

“Sounds like you got free burgers then,” said one English girl.

“So you don’t think he’ll ever come back then?” I asked.

“No, probably not.”

“Actually something similar happened to me,” said another teacher, a guy from Oregon. “We ordered pizza of that same website, and we thought it was a 2-for-1 deal. But my flatmate doesn’t really understand Turkish, and so she mis-interpreted the deal. Actually it was a ½ and ½ pizza. So when the delivery boy showed up with just one pizza with two different halves, we were upset. But when he heard about the misunderstanding, he left and came back with a second pizza and a bottle of Coke!”

“Nice,” I said.

The Oregon teacher is also a big Seinfeld fan, and so he appreciated our efforts to put what happened into a Seinfeld scheme. After listening to how we had outlined it, he offered his own scenario.

“Actually, you’re wrong about George,” he said. “You know how George is always lying, trying to get out of paying things. He would just pretend he never ordered a pizza. As for Elaine, I think she would get obsessed and actually go and find the guy and throw cash at him. She’d yell, ‘Take your money!’

“I don’t know,” I said. “You know sometimes George can get a conscience. Remember the episode with the security guard? Where he felt bad for the security guard having to stand all day, so he went and bought him a chair so he could sit down –“

“—yeah, and then the security guard fell asleep and the store got robbed!”

“Now that I think about it,” I said. “I think in this case, Kramer would be the one who would sue the company. He would get that lawyer, the black guy, to represent him against the restaurant. The lawyer would try to get 50,000 dollars in damages, but Kramer would settle when the restaurant offered him something like one year of free burgers.”

###

That evening, I asked Ozge if the delivery boy had ever come by.

“No,” she said. “And I waited here all day until 3 o’clock.”

“How about that? I guess we got free burgers after all.”

“Shall we watch some Seinfeld?”

“Sure.”

Later that night, I thought about our delivery boy, who at that precise moment was somewhere out in the Istanbul universe. Quite possibly, he was out on a delivery right as we speak, climbing a staircase, knocking on a door, praying desperately that the customer would pay in cash, and leave a tip. And quite possibly, he might have been thinking of us in our parallel Istanbul universe. Who knows? He might have wished us afiyet olsun (bon appetit). Or maybe, just maybe, he was hoping that in the next life we would be re-incarnated as camels in the desert, being raped by polar bears.

James Tressler, a novelist and journalist whose books include “Lost Coast D.A.” and “Letters from Istanbul, Vol. 1,” is a former Times-Standard reporter. He lives in Istanbul.