This month marks my tenth anniversary in the city by the Bosphorus, so I want to go back and remember how it was that late summer day in August 2009. A lot of things have changed: the city has survived a turbulent decade, one marked by protests, a failed military coup and its fallout, and the ceaseless hammers of construction, as the ancient city hurtles further into the 21st Century. The city has changed me as well. A decade ago, I was little more than a backpacker in search of the nearest pub. Now I am married, settled in an apartment in Üsküdar, a child on the way, and starting a university teaching position in the fall.
But I’ve always said that Istanbul is the unfinished city. It changes just as we change, and so with that in mind, I want to go back and relive that first day. They say you never have a second chance to make a first impression. That may be true, but we can at least recapture certain pivotal moments in our lives, look back at the old new world, our old new selves.
****
As we came down out of the clouds, the great city spread out over the horizon.
“Look! There’s the Hagia Sophia!” cried the woman sitting next to me
“And there’s the Bosphorus!” her husband enjoined. They were also Americans.
I was going through a phase where I was afraid of flying – a strange phenomenon, for up to that point I’d always loved it – so I could not share in their enthusiasm. Instead, I just warded off panic attacks, anxious for the moment when we would safely be on the ground.
At last we were, and once inside the busy corridors of Ataturk International, my fellow Americans were gone. Like most Americans abroad, they had very little time or patience for their compatriots. They were on holiday and ready to enjoy “new and interesting people.”
It was August 2009, the world was in the middle of an economic crisis, and I was starting a new chapter of my life. After five years in Prague, I was now in the storied capital of the Near East.
****
I found my way to the exit, where a small army of drivers were waiting, holding up placards. I saw one with my name on it, spelled correctly, which was reassuring. The guy holding it introduced himself as Çetin. He was a Kurdish guy in his early twenties – Çetin and I would get to know each other quite well later on.
He ushered me outside into bright, warm August sunshine. It was crowded, noisy, like all big airports. We found the car, put my single bag in the trunk, and set off.
We sped along the highway – I mean, really raced along. That trip was my introduction to Istanbul drivers. It was a good thing I was in the back seat, as Çetin darted back and forth between lanes, riding the asses of the cars in front, throttling the gas relentlessly, tooting his horn instead of using the breaks. Occasionally he’d look at me in the rear-view mirror and laugh, good-naturedly enjoying my terror.
As we got closer to the center, we slowed occasionally to let covered Anatolian women and their children, or else fruit sellers, straggle across the road. They seemed completely oblivious to the cars racing perilously past, walking as if they were back home in their native villages. Of course, some say Istanbul is just one big village, or a patchwork of villages, but I wouldn’t find that out until later on.
At the moment, I needed a cigarette badly. “Go ahead,” Cetin said, or rather signaled, pushing a button to open the window. He didn’t speak English so we just communicated with pantomime. Puffing nervously, I looked out the window at the passing cityscape. Already it felt much different from Prague – Mediterranean, sprawling, wider in scope.
The sea! Buoyant salty air came sailing in as we rounded the Golden Horn. The Sea of Marmara, bright and inviting, full of boats and ships, looked out at the horizon. I realized it was the first time I’d seen the sea since leaving California five years before. The brisk, energizing feel of the salty air poured into my lungs, giving me a feeling I hadn’t had for a long time. Hell, with Prague! I was never meant to be land-locked. For the first time, my anxiety vanished and I began to look forward to this new adventure.
“Go East, young man.” In those days, a lot of people I knew were saying that. China was the future. And yet here I was in Istanbul. Why had I chosen Istanbul over Shanghai, or Gangzou or Beijing? Because I’d always been intrigued by Istanbul. As a kid, I had a globe in my room, and I used to rotate it slowly, running my fingers of the exotic names, places I wanted to visit someday … Paris, London, Rome, Istanbul. The Black Sea … I wondered why it was called the Black Sea – was it really “black?”
Now here I was, as if I had magically entered that old globe in my room, the roaming fantasies of childhood had suddenly sprung to life.
We passed the great mosques and their minarets, crawled through the traffic over a bridge, and then we were in Beyoğlu. I knew Istanbul was a big city, but nothing had prepared me for the denseness of it, buildings piled atop one another, standing shoulder to shoulder, and every street seemed to be a narrow back street leading to another back street. We passed street-level cafes and covered bazaars, young men carrying trays of hot tea or balancing simit bread baskets on their heads. Yep, I was a long way from California, a long way from America, a long way from Prague.
We arrived at a hostel, where apparently my school had arranged for me to stay temporarily until I could be taken to the teacher’s lodgement that was promised in the contract I’d signed back in Prague.
Çetin drove off, waving and saying something in Turkish (I hoped it was something about the hostel being paid for – I hadn’t brought much in terms of savings, and was scraping by until I got my first paycheck). When he was gone, I sure hoped he had driven me to the right place.
Inside the lobby, the concierge spoke English. I gave him my name, and was relieved when he said I was registered and all paid up. He escorted me up a small elevator to the room, which small but tidy, with a handsome view of the building across the street.
Everything had happened so quickly, seemingly at random, the way I’d been whisked from the airport to this room in Beyoğlu. With my American paranoia, I wondered if there was a con lurking somewhere behind the walls. That presently, shadowy men would storm into the room, put a bag over my head and take me away to some remote al-Qaeda outpost beyond the city.
Understand, I was in a Muslim country for the first time. It didn’t really hit me until we were on the ground, passing the mosques, and later that afternoon, when I heard the imam’s call to prayer for the first time. The war in Iraq was still going strong in those days, and even though Turkey was officially an ally country, as an American I couldn’t help but feel a bit nervous, unsure of my new surroundings.
I managed to get downstairs without being abducted. I passed through the lobby quite safely and found myself standing outside with no one waiting to stuff me into the back of a beat-up van. Which way to go? There were a thousand different directions, that tremendous feeling of possibilities you have the first day in a new land.
Spying a steady throng of people passing along a nearby street, I opted to go where they were going. It turned out to be Istiklal Caddesi, or Independence Avenue. Historically, this district was called Pera, and it was where all the famous hotels and embassies were located. It was where Agatha Christie stayed when she wrote “Murder on the Orient Express,” or so they said.
All along the long avenue were shops, cafes, bookstores – including a very good English one, which is long gone, unfortunately. Street musicians sat in the shade playing the saz, a kind of lute, or jammed traditional songs on acoustic guitars, or sang in melancholy voices. It was all very Oriental (I hadn’t heard of Edward Said’s “Orientalism” yet, so was unaware that I wasn’t supposed to be seeing it that way.
I continued walking, not knowing where I was going, enjoying the steady stream of people passing, two currents, one going up the avenue the other down, people of different colors and nationalities. Young hip European women in skirts, tanned, flashing jewelry as well as traditional covered women; tourists gazing upward, looking lost or awed; earnest-looking university students passing out political fliers; old men roasting chestnuts at booths, the rich smell of the chestnuts passing over the crowds and mixing with the music of the street musicians. It all felt cosmopolitan, these people and cultures blending together.
I found a fast food restaurant that served burgers on toasted buns, and sat having my first meal in Istanbul watching the people pass by. When I finished the meal, a girl brought me some wet napkins to wipe my face and hands.
Up the street, I was relieved to find there were plenty of bars. Technically, smoking was banned but none of the bars enforced the law, or else had patios and terraces where everyone sat smoking and drinking pints of the local beer Efes.
That whole first afternoon passed in a daze, as I tried to filter and process all these new things. I’d never lived in such a big city before, but had always wanted to. Now that I was there, sitting at the bar and looking out at everything, the city seemed almost insurmountable. How would I ever find my way around such a sprawling expanse?
I’d purchased a Turkish phrase book before leaving Prague, and had thus far managed to master two words, “Merhaba” (Hello) and “Teşekkurler” (Thank you). I think I just about wore those two poor little words out by the end of the afternoon, muttering them shyly to whomsoever I happened to encounter.
****
That night, back at the hostel, I crawled into bed, taking comfort in the fact that I had a room, a sanctuary. But as I closed my eyes, I could hear the sound of music pulsing – strident singing, hands clapping. I got up and looked out the window. Some kind of concert was going on up on the roof of the next building. I wished I was there with them, they all looked so lit-up and magnetic, there on their rooftop. This was the big city, summer time rooftop concerts late into the night.
Sometime later, I fell asleep and woke up again. Outside it was raining, and I heard thunder. A storm was coming in, maybe from the Black Sea. I didn’t have my bearings enough to be able to place it. It was very late and you could still hear the music from the rooftop, or maybe that was in a dream. I went back to sleep, and dreamed most likely, of what I don’t remember. And in the morning, I woke up to a new life in a new world.
James Tressler, a former Lost Coast resident, is a writer and teacher. He lives in Üsküdar with his wife Özge and cat Ginger.
