c/o Abbey Francis
Let’s start with this ridiculous platitude, which is utterly unworthy of my expensive future Wesleyan anthropology degree, but which I have to believe anyway:
In Istanbul, things just work out.
Taxis don’t really have seatbelts in the backseats, and drivers are impatient with traffic and drive like crazy people. The public transportation system also seems like a jumbled mess; there are buses, trams, funiculars, subways, trolleys, and ferries to negotiate in your attempts to move about the city.
And of course, the streets themselves tend to be a disaster. The sidewalks are shoddy or nonexistent (I trip spectacularly on the uneven bricks—always in front of disapproving Turkish men with mustaches, it feels like—at least twice a day). Drivers don’t seem to think it’s odd to drive within inches of you, even if you’re sticking close to the side of the road. The other day I was walking down a narrow, cobblestoned, hilly street and my purse was hit by a car’s side mirror as it swiped past me.
On the whole, rules just don’t seem to apply here in quite the same way as they do in the United States. It’s too crowded and too noisy to worry about regulations. If you haven’t already gathered that my main focus of thought on this matter is transportation-related, perhaps this last anecdote will clear that up for you: a few days ago I was honked at for standing still on a sidewalk and taking a picture. Why, you ask? Oh, because a car wanted to drive there. Of course.
Yet despite what seems like its continuous efforts to prove to us foreigners just how idiosyncratic and disorganized it is, Istanbul also has a knack for taking care of you.
Those crazy taxi drivers who weave at unbelievable speeds in between the other cars on the rain-soaked roads? They are, in general, pretty nice guys. They ask you and your friends in broken English if you’ve been to Taksim Square or to the aqueducts or to Sultanhamet yet, and you respond in broken Turkish that, yes, you have. And they seem pleased and chat with you about the Galataseray soccer team and turn up the music and don’t crash the car and get you home safe.
That impossible public transportation system? It may be (dare I say) Byzantine in its structure, but it also manages to pull through right when you need it. For example, you can be walking down the coast of the Asian side of the city after an incredible day of open-air markets and outdoor cafés, wondering how you’re going to get back across the Bosphorus from where you’ve ended up, and you will find a ferry station that will take you to Sultanhamet, close to a restaurant that will serve you some of the best kebabs you’ve ever eaten. That’s the kind of thing that happens here with such utter regularity that I’m afraid these happy coincidences might just become monotonous (though I doubt it).
In this city, things just work out. Phones lost to taxis and the floors of dance clubs inexplicably end up in the hands of friends of friends. Kind strangers help you find the right building when you’re looking lost, and stop becoming strangers when you happen to run into them again and again. That’s what Istanbul is really good at: giving you not just what you want, but what you need, be it ferry, phone, or new friend. And it seems to push you, just a little, to believe in fate, and to believe that the world is at once huge and also very, very small.