An American Redneck in Istanbul – Istanbul, Turkey

An American Redneck in Istanbul

In March of 1998, I traveled to Turkey and Bulgaria with my friend Jason. We wanted to go to Europe; not via London or Paris, but straight into the heart of the Black Sea, the crossing guard of Europe and Asia. Hospital bills abound as a result of my unparalleled success, but what I’ve learned about myself and other people is more than worth a couple of months of backed-up bills and a two-month limp.

“Welcome to Istanbul,” said the flight-attendant in a flat Turkish accent as I stumbled from the plane and up the worn carpet toward the airport concourse; strange language crackling through the intercom. Feeling encouraged by the clouds of smoke rising from every group of people in the airport, we lit up and caught our breath before heading for customs.

The customs agent at the airport exit glanced at our bags; poorly-packed canvas lumps far too big to carry with any comfort or success, and waved us through rather dismissively. Had we verified some truth that allowed us to pass without some beefy Turk with rifle and badge yanking our underwear, unexposed film and travel-size shampoos out of our bags? Had something I said under my breath miraculously been misconstrued as the “magic word”? Before I could answer my question, I was quickly stuffed onto a small, but incredibly clean mini-bus and whisked off through the airport’s innumerable rotary intersections into the thrall of greater Istanbul…and that’s all that really mattered.

Through the bumps and hurtling potholes, I began to notice my surroundings. I was then officially in awe. At first, it was a sweeping sensation that the familiar world was behind me; far behind me and waving tentatively to the back of an ignorant, yet scared, head. Soon, however, I became unaware of apprehension or fear. Customs was complete. The ache of Atlantic jet-setting was fading and drifting into just another painful memory.

Istanbul is big. It is, in fact, very big…millions of Turks, Greeks, Kurds and Bulgarians, as well as the usual spray of tourists and escapists. I say “escapist” because Turkey is literally packed with English, Australian and American youth trying to see something other than the Seine, Big Ben and the Black Forest; a mob of young people trying to squeeze every bit of kabob from each Turkish lira.

Istanbul, built on two continents, is literally built. In the distance, the buildings are a gargantuan one-dimensional wall of cement and glass pressing against the Sea of Marmara. Some of the apartments and buildings on the road into greater Istanbul are new, but the stupifyingly vast majority are old and time-humbled; some crumbling into themselves and some into the streets. Still, they are lived in by the poor and the Gypsies, who, from, what we saw later, have absolutely no means by which to further their lot. This has become increasingly clear…a painful, if not historical precedent.

Upon arrival at Aksaray station, we tried to look as native or at least as comfortable as possible, but we were still singled out by street vendors and stared at curiously by locals…maybe because we looked like huge turtles with our ill-planned and overly compensated bags. The Turkish “taksi” drivers, we found later, refer to backpackers as “ninja turtles” because we resemble them although we’re not green or cartoonish, except to them. It is, in fact, great sport for taxis to intentionally splash people like Jason and I…I found it amusing too, because through the glare of smoke stained windshields we saw that boundless joy…that glint of glee in the eyes of cabbies as they sped toward us in the rain splashing us with sludge of unimaginable stink.

Istanbul is largely fueled by gasoline and coal, and the pollution is stifling. However, as I stepped off the airport bus, the smell from a nearby cafe amazed me. How could the smell of something as trivial as food overpower the omnipresent odor of three empires worth of refuse? The odor of people leaning against dirty walls, laughing at impossible jokes and cramming grease-soaked kebabs into their moustached mouths.

On the north side, Istanbul is residential. Further still, it becomes industrial and horrifyingly so. Still further, the clog of buildings descends into a city of squatters and splintered cement. But to the south, it runs directly into the heart of the Golden Horn, the place of ancient mosques and throngs of tourists…and symbiotically, masses of dirty, young children selling postcard books, elderly shoeshine men with “six hungry children” and impeccably dressed carpet merchants.

As we debated in which direction the Orient Hostel lay, we were approached by an awkwardly, yet well-dressed Turk who launched into a toothy exchange with us…in English. I didn’t ask his name and that is something one must always do in Istanbul. The city is founded on a base of connectivity and personality, therefore, to achieve anything or go anywhere, one must be known and be willing to get to know “everyone”. He rode the tram with us and introduced himself as Oktay. As I recall, he attended school for economics in Wisconsin, and talked at length about how much he didn’t miss the winters of the US.

Before we parted ways with polite handshakes, he gave us a map of Istanbul and expert directions to the hostel, then walked away smoking a strange cigarette. To me, this was shocking. I had convinced myself, in typical American manner, that I would be hustled or robbed by anyone that approached me. This was not a surface fear…more like an underlying caution…a safeguard against failure.

We walked in a haze of amazement, with the faces of hopelessly lost children. The streets are not in any kind of grid pattern in Istanbul. It’s far too old and crowded to be laid out “logically”, however, considering that it has been built, burned, rebuilt and conquered many times over the last two-thousand years, it all works out pretty well.

Around one corner, we noticed a small crowd gathering around a newly opened cafe. As we crept nearer, we saw a sheep crouched above a dented aluminum bowl. Suddenly, the man gripping the animal produced a giant knife and with one graceful movement, slit the throat to the amazement of some, and the cheers of others. The blood, collected in the bowl, was then rushed inside…the crowd smiled, some hand-shaking and niceties were given to the owners, and we continued down the hill in shock.

I wanted to have a place in the ritual. I didn’t want to be “the American with a camera and too many bags”. I wanted to understand it and be in on the mystery. After that moment, the day grew brighter, the wind blew sweeter and the air felt like a kind shove from the sky. We were in on it. We were in the bowels of a city that had more traditions, more conquerors and more significance than any other imaginable…and being in the bowels of history, smelling the food, breath and pollution of millions of people from hundreds of towns, economic standings and backgrounds ain’t that bad.

I came to Turkey to be beat down with confusion. I wanted to be overrun with shouted sales calls and chased by carpet dealers. My idea, my promise to myself, was to see something that I’d never seen and hope that it opened doors that I’ve never had the courage or self-surety to squeeze through. I wanted complete sensory overload; emotional drama and mental blocks, sore muscles and coughing fits from Turkish tobacco. And Istanbul waited with smiles and glares.

Finally, we happened upon the Orient Hostel, a fairly dingy, but bustling accommodation. For about $6 per night, you sleep in a dormitory room filled with bunk-beds and the snores of strangers. Paul, the pseudo-witty and soft-spoken desk clerk from New Zealand, made fun of us for getting short-changed at the currency exchange office and pointed us to the cafe on the top floor of the building…where we at once scrambled for coffee, beer and cheap “meatball” sandwiches served by an aggressively-moody Romanian lady.

Gorkan, the youngest of the two and cousin to Mehmet Gözübüyük, the better dressed, yet less well-versed of the two, escorted us through the crumbling archway that leads to 60 or more square blocks of silver, leather, metal and ceramic shops…all covered by one enormous vaulted stone roof. Mike, from the hostel, advised that if lost in the bazaar, one need only walk uphill because all other exits lead to the river which is all the way across the Golden Horn from the Orient.

We tried to keep track of where we were in the electric tunnels of the oldest “mall” in the world, but it’s hopeless for two hillbillies in Istanbul to do much more than gawk and say “shucks” at every turn. From chatting and smoking far too many cigarettes with Gorkan, we learned that he was studying English and not only needed the practice, but enjoyed it. This in mind, we launched into the first of many (and maddeningly repetitive) rants about the differences between Raleigh, North Carolina and Istanbul, Turkey.

As the sun set, we found ourselves perched on a couch with a 45-year-old kilim. Apple tea and Turkish coffee arrived on an odd scale-like tray with glasses balanced precariously on a ceramic plate. Abdullah, Mehmet and Gorkan’s uncle and owner of the shop, talked to us for an hour or so…his language was economic-tinged philosophy:

“What is money, JAY-son?” he asked, “When you hev money, you are happy…when it is gone, all you are left with is dirt on the hands…we hev met by fate…we are together, here, for a reason!”

We both knew he was buttering inexperienced minds with dripping charisma and wide smiles, but it was fine with us. Jason planned on buying a carpet for his parents anyway, so the schpeil was unneeded, albeit enjoyable. Life is all important to the residents of Istanbul. Business is pleasure and pleasure is business…the two are inseparable. Turkish sales tactics are coy and ruthless, but the sight of a store owner serving apple tea and challenging the customer to a match of backgammon is something I’ll always remember and respect.

Later that night, Abdullah met us at the bar down in the hostel basement. The bar, as nice or nicer than those I’ve seen in the States, was quiet. Gabrielle, a French-Canadienne living in the hostel, was spinning Turkish-disco-arabesque-hiphop and on our request, indulged us by playing bits of the Trainspotting soundtrack.

Still later, Abdullah took us to a disco called The Underground. The bar was dark and had numerous lights and a billiard table and a framed picture of Freddie Mercury. We drank and talked, at one point I slam-danced with Mehmet to Nirvana…leaving him sprawled on the floor. He was either incredibly drunk or floating in some sort of hashish cloud, because he simply couldn’t stay on his feet.

When we sat again, they asked me what I did for a living and I told them I was a bouncer in a local pub. Somehow, this description circled around the booth and became “bodyguard”. I played up the faux image of myself with white shirt, black suit and sunglasses…holding a mini-speaker in my ear with one hand and glancing around protectively with my other hand fingering the trigger of a very large and imposing gun.

As my new friends relished in the faux intrigue of my supposed life, I noticed two young Turkish girls sitting across from us in a large booth. They were alone. With camera in tow, I walked over and asked, over the loud music, if I could snap a quick picture of them together. They smiled, I shot and sat with them. The one on the far-end of the seat spoke no English, but Yasemin did. Yasemin was beautiful. We talked, or rather, tried to talk…bridging the conversation gap with two utterly different languages is difficult at best. She never stopped smiling, which was nice because up to this point, only carpet hawkers had bothered. I was transfixed by her; her hair short and dark and her voice, small and expressive. We chatted about 16^th century British literature, as best we could, and she gave me her address. My first tinge of a foreign crush…powerful enough to make we want to learn another language.

Yasemin and I wrapped up our conversation for later and our wobbly group struck out in search of the hostel, again. On the way out, I stopped off at the restroom only to see a drunk bar worker rewiring a 220-volt ceiling connection with a beer tucked into the crook of his arm and hot-wires hanging all around him. I didn’t want to be around when the smell of burning hair and boiling beer filled the room, so I tightened the grip on my bladder and headed for home.

It was raining outside. I apparently hit my head on one of the typically low Turkish door frames the night before and woke up to three Australian kids packing up for a day in the city, a bump on my forehead and my first international hangover. This was a sort of milestone for me. I discovered throughout the course of breakfast that nausea and headaches feel the same anywhere and that the romantic idea of escaping the trappings of Western life do not extend into the realm of alcohol abuse. After the ravenous inhalation of yogurt, black olives and bread, Jason and I wandered around the area near the Blue Mosque and the Hagia Sofia in search of the fabled Turkish-coffee shop.

Instead, we found Mehmet. He was sculking about on the street in front of a magazine kiosk, smoking and looking very tired. However, when he saw us, he threw his arms into the air, greeted us and dragged us away from the tourist shops and cafeterias. Soon, we were nestled into the cushions of a small and particularly tourist-free cafe. Everyone was face down with backgammon boards or smoking apple tobacco from the huge water pipes.

Mehmet brought a pipe over and thus began one of the most relaxing and singularly wonderful moments of the whole trip. Some of the men wanted to meet us and ask us what we did, where we were from, why we dressed so shabbily and if America was expensive…and we answered them all as honestly as we could. I spent the majority of that blissful hour staring out the open door as street vendors walked by on their way to the next bustling corner. Turkish vendors have the almost magical ability to turn postcards into umbrellas overnight. The same boys that sold me postcards marched by confidently with cheap red umbrellas which, with any luck, they’d manage to sell for about $25 each to some nervous German or American tourist. Being rained on and overcharged ain’t so bad, it’s just another form of the Turkish bath, I guess.

Jason then saw it fit to try and find a place that would “perform” a straight razor shave. I thought it sounded sufficiently risky and off we went trailing behind the tireless Mehmet on the way to yet another back alley business…and at this point I began to understand what was going on. Mehmet was taking us from place to place out of the goodness of his heart, but our little trek also served a distinctly economic purpose. Everywhere we went, we were greeted as “friends of Mehmet and Abdullah” and treated to tea and flattering niceties.

We were being shown off, protected from scams and giving business to the various other ventures that Mehmet’s family and friends were involved in. This symbiotic relationship is a small price to pay for the parts of Istanbul that we were allowed to see and experience. And what we saw amazed me. We sloshed through alleys packed with delivery vans and garbage bins; herds of stray dogs and packs of jubilant school children zig-zagging between us and the filthy curbs. We saw women hanging laundry in the stale air of the city and men bickering face-to-face and sitting back-to-back on milk crates with chess boards stretching before them. This was the true grit of Istanbul, brazenly soiled and perpetually wet, yet all the men were clean shaven and dressed to the nines.

The 14-year-old that wielded the blade couldn’t stop showing me his soccer magazines and his soccer uniform, which he kept in a drawer underneath the hair products. I think, to him, his family trade was merely a sidebar to his youthful fantasies. Yet even though he was still a child in every meaning of the word, he was first and foremost a barber in the grand scheme of the “Turkish Ideal”. He massaged my arms, scalp and face and proceeded to pull out all of my ingrown hairs. Then he powdered me, brushed my hair, sprayed me down with a fairly inoffensive cologne and followed Jason and I outside to wave goodbye. For $3, I was groomed beyond recognition and primed to move in on Bulgaria�and so, cologned and shaven, we were off.

The bus station, called the Otogar (literally “auto-station”) is a huge donut shaped mass of a building with hundreds of brightly colored storefronts that all look exactly the same, and somehow we had to find the company with whom the hostel travel agent had booked our tickets. The Otogar is the crowning achievement of Turkish modernity. Here is Istanbul on a distilled, smaller scale…minus anything good. Cabs swoop past with no regard for pedestrians, people shout and push; the concept of forming a line is covered by hurried feet. All in all, it was an electrifying, if not educational adventure…but we were still in Turkey, with Bulgaria waiting only a few hours away.

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