Istanbul (Part 1)

11/5/13

 

“It will take you at least two hours to cross the city,” Onur informed me, as I told him I was landing on the European side of Istanbul. I was requesting directions to the Asian side, where his place, the place I wanted to rent, was. “You should take metro till zeytinburnu than you should switch to metrobus till the last station of it. You should change 1 or 2 time this metrobus the same line. Last station is ‘sogutlucesme’ on asian side. İt is just 1 minute to last metrobus stop. İf you check from (website hidden) maps you will see it.” [our medium, airbnb.com, redacted the name of the site; I’m not holding confidentiality here or something] He then gives his number in the following way: “My mobile is (phone number hidden) and one [next message] Doublezero and than ninety and later on five and three later five than doublefour and later three and three later three…” It goes on like this, to fifteen numbers.

I hesitated before typing a reply, wondering what I could say that would convey the appropriate incredulity. 

No no, my conscience said, don’t be a dick.

 “So I should get on the metro and go to zeytinburnu, and then get on a metrobus? Which one? And do I change metrobusses to get to sogutlucesme, or do I stay on the same line? Or does the bus end or something, and I need to get on a new bus that is the same number?”

 The eventual reply was marginally helpful. I wrote what I could, and looked up a bus to Gardermoen. My flight left precisely five hours before L’s. At first, she was unsure if she should go with me to the airport, or stay. She would be computerless and only have her books to read. Should she study? What would she do in an airport? I helped her weigh her options, what felt like several times the night prior and the morning of. Finally, as if with the clarity and directness of knocking on my head like some heavy door, she asked, “Do you want me to come with you?” 

“Yes,” I said, and cut myself off. From experience, I had known that this could be one of the situations where it is intuitive and incorrect to give one’s reasoning. One must always be extra careful when dealing with women.

“OK,” she piped, snapping instantly from her lull of indecision, and not unpreparedly one might note. We were soon at Gardermoen. 

Our separation was late, well into boarding time. Difficult though it was, I made it to passport control just about twenty-five minutes before the flight was scheduled to take off. I needn’t have searched my ticket, as it turns out, to find my gate. Rather, I needed only to follow the wails of the many children screaming into the silence like a lighthouse in the night to guide me. I stepped into line and identify the culprits immediately. Several parents were unable and/or unwilling to attempt to control this maelstrom of noise. I tracked their progress as their crying redshifted down the jetway. It’s not too late, I thought, this flight still could be saved.

 I thought that hopefully. I thought that with a sense of optimism, with a determination that things were going to be better, not just for the day, but my life in general. I thought that before I realized they all sat in a semi-circle around me, like kids encircling to beat me up at lunch. 

The flight was delayed half an hour, because, well, why not. As we took off, the screaming of the small children grew sharper, but began to die away. All except the kid sitting behind me, who must have been three or four, and one other unseen hellion. His screaming evolved, adapting to every attempt to flush out the noise, to drown it in music (metal, naturally). Screeching is the closest word I can think of – the type of screeching where even a bystander can understand the effort being intentionally put into it, beyond that of normal crying. This kid was not content with shifting himself into ‘cry’ and coasting; his tenacity can only be matched by that of T.E. Lawrence, sysadmins, and possibly cats chasing laser pointers.

 A Turkish Airlines flight from Oslo Gardermoen to Istanbul Ataturk airport lasts three hours and thirty minutes. This kid’s ability to screech like a banshee on fire lasts roughly the same length, so that he had (breaking for lunch) completed one full Europe without running out of tears or mucus. His father, apparently unable to cope with the situation, began to shout at him, sounding like a character from Banjo-Kazooie: exaggerated real words parsed up by syllable and then mixed randomly (here’s an example).

 During the flight, when he would pass the torch to another child who would begin to wail, he would free-roam the plane, inspecting his results. Suddenly dissatisfied with his replacement’s work, he would return to his seat, and industriously lead by example.

By the time we (new verb!) deplaned, he elected to stop. With no jetway available, we were shown to two large buses which serviced the front and rear exits of the plane. On the stairs departing the front of the craft, I made my choice and swore to avoid this child at all costs, taking the rear bus instead. The buses filled, and though he was only one seat behind me on the plane, this kid and his family were the last off. They walked straight for the bus nearest the door, problem child first. And as he neared the door, something called to him, starkly out of the blue. Literally stopping dead at the door, and making a ninety degree turn, he began walking straight for my bus, as if innocently curious. His father gave his shout-request of vivisected words, and, completely unable to influence the decisions of his child, powerlessly and hopelessly followed his wanderings. Just as they moved away, the front bus closed its doors and dashed away. By the time we reached the main building, I was less a man and more a flash of light, moving ever away.

-Sky