Travel Reference
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differences between today's Istanbul and the Istanbul I remember filled the trip both with
nostalgia and with vivid examples of how change is sweeping the planet.
The moment I stepped off my plane, I remembered how much I enjoy this country.
Marveling at the efficiency of Istanbul's Atatürk Airport, I popped onto the street and into
a yellow
taksi
. Seeing the welcoming grin of the unshaven driver who greeted me with
a
“Merhaba,”
I just blurted out,
“Çok güzel.”
I forgot I remembered the phrase. It just
came to me—like a baby shouts for joy. I was back in Turkey, and it was “very beautiful”
indeed. My first hours in Turkey were filled with similar déjà vu moments like no travel
homecoming I could remember.
As the
taksi
turned off the highway and into the tangled lanes of the tourist zone—just
below the Blue Mosque—all the tourist-friendly businesses were still lined up, providing
a backdrop for their chorus line of barkers shouting, “Yes, Mister!”
I looked at the kids in the streets and remembered a rougher time, when kids like these
would earn small change by hanging out the passenger door of ramshackle vans. They'd
yell “Topkapı, Topkapı, Topkapı” (or whichever neighborhood was the destination) in a
scramble to pick up passengers in the shared minibuses called
dolmu
ş
.
(The
dolmu
ş
—a
wild cross between a taxi, a bus, and a kidnapping vehicle—is literally and so appropri-
ately called “stuffed”).
While Turkey's new affluence has nearly killed the
dolmu
ş
,
the echoes of the boys
hollering from the vans bounced happily in my memory: “Aksaray, Aksaray, Ak-
saray…Sultanahmet, Sultanahmet, Sultanahmet.” I remembered my favorite call was for
the train station's neighborhood: “Sirkeci, Sirkeci, Sirkeci.” After dropping off my bag at
my hotel, I stopped for tea—served in the customary small, tulip-shaped glass—before
heading out to explore.
Istanbul, a city of over 10 million, is thriving. The city is poignantly littered both with
remnants of grand (if eventually corrupt) empires and with living, breathing reminders
of the harsh reality of life in the developing world. Sipping my tea, I watched old men
shuffle by, hunched over as if still bent under the towering loads they had carried all of
their human-beast-of-burden lives.
