The tea-house by the old pool in Bukhara has eleven tables, and for thirty years it had one waiter in the afternoons: Nodir aka, in a white shirt, with a green tray.
Every tourist will do the same thing. They will drink two pots of tea, they will photograph the teapot, and they will leave a note under the plate on the way out. And Nodir aka will pick it up, walk to the door, and give it back.
He would not take a tip. Not from Germans, not from Japanese groups, not from the president of a bank from Tashkent who insisted for ten minutes. "Shall I bring you another pot?" he would say. "Would you like green or black?" And nothing else.
When he was young he would carry twelve teapots on one tray, and the old men would argue about it all evening.
In October 2019 a woman from Almaty left an envelope on table four. He carried it to the door in two fingers, the way he always did.
She wouldn't take it back.
"In 1994 my mother and I sat at that table," she said. "We had come from the station and we had eleven thousand soʻm between us. You put two plates of plov in front of us and you said somebody had already paid for that table."
Nodir aka stood in the doorway with the envelope in his hand.
"Nobody had paid," she said. "I was nine. I have known that since I was about fifteen."
He took it. "Then it is not a tip," he said. "It is the bill."
The money went into the roof over the two tables by the water, which leaked every spring. The empty envelope is in a frame by the door, with a date on it and nothing else, and Nodir aka will not explain it to anybody who asks.