It was a typical summer evening in Erbil—scorching, unrelenting, and dry. The temperature hovered around 44°C, the kind that makes the streets shimmer and leaves you thirsting not just for water, but for a moment of reprieve. I had been walking around the Empire complex, letting time pass slowly, the way it does when the heat dulls everything down to a slower rhythm.

That’s when I ducked into a café, named Trend—modern, dimly lit, and air-conditioned just enough to feel like a sanctuary. The menu offered the usual suspects: cold brews, milkshakes, and mojitos. But then, nestled quietly in the corner of the chalkboard menu, I saw it: Iced Matcha Latte.

I ordered it instinctively, perhaps because something about the idea of finely ground green tea whisked into milk and poured over ice sounded both exotic and restorative.

The drink arrived in a curved designer glass—light green swirls dancing in slow motion as the barista gave it a final stir. I took a sip. The sensation was immediate and vivid: creamy yet clean, sweet but slightly vegetal, with an earthy depth that lingered like a pleasant afterthought. It wasn’t just refreshing; it was reviving. A kind of quiet sophistication in a cup, cold against the heat, subtle against the boldness of the day.

Matcha, I later reminded myself, isn’t just green tea—it’s the essence of tea, the heart of a centuries-old ritual. Grown primarily in Japan, matcha begins its life as shade-grown tea leaves. In the final weeks before harvest, the tea bushes are covered to protect them from direct sunlight. This careful shading slows down growth, increases chlorophyll production, and boosts the levels of L-theanine, an amino acid that lends matcha its signature calm alertness.

Once harvested, only the most tender leaves are selected, steamed to preserve their colour and nutrients, then air-dried. The leaves are then stripped of their stems and veins and stone-ground into an ultra-fine, jade-green powder. This laborious curing process is what makes matcha unique—unlike regular tea, where leaves are steeped and discarded, matcha powder is consumed whole, leaf and all.

No wonder that iced glass felt so rich in character. With every sip, I could taste the deliberate care, the legacy of a tradition stretching back to Zen monasteries and Japanese tea ceremonies—now swirling gently in ice and milk in a Kurdish café.

That evening, as I sat quietly and watched the sun begin to dip behind the angular skyline of Erbil, I felt a rare kind of calm. The iced matcha latte had done more than cool me down—it had created a pocket of stillness amid the day’s furnace. A gentle reprieve wrapped in green.

Some drinks quench your thirst. And then some drinks root you to the present, remind you to slow down, to savour, to feel. That iced matcha latte was the latter.

And on a 44°C summer evening in Erbil, that was exactly what I needed.