Stranded In Istanbul

Stranded In Istanbul

On the Galata Bridge I stood, staring solemnly at the fishermen who were casting their lines out with as much hope and meaning like an ever failing thespian, being offered a final audition for Macbeth in the West End. I watched contently as they conversed between each other imagining what mutterings they were sharing, different techniques, weather conditions, or other aspects that affect their day’s haul. In hindsight they were probably asking why a sunburnt salmon-esque Englishmen was staring at them writing. The bridge was comforting to me at that time, the border between the West and the East, the chaos and bedlam that built the city around me made me feel less alone.   

When the daydreaming became dull and tiresome I wondered off the bridge and headed back through the noises, smells and sights that created Istanbul, the sun was setting and the fairy lit streets were starting to come alive as the august night cooled down. As I walked across Taksim Square I heard my name called among the fuzzy vintage stereo sounds of echoing early evening prayers and was confronted with Francoise a predictable Frenchman I had met at the hostel the night before,

“Wes, how are you? How’s your friend holding up?”

He spoke of my compatriot’s predicament, the reason I was now fending for myself in the Turkish capital.

I told Françoise that “500 English Pounds, 4 hours of panic and 3 sob filled long distance phone calls later and he was anxiously flying back to England.”  Françoise spurted a very comical noise every time he processed something and the shock of my friend’s situation only exacerbated the sounds that emanated from his mouth. 

“Gaaahh, what an honest man, I would have kept quiet if I was in his position, Gahh” A silence graced the conversation.

“Have you ever travelled alone before?” Francoise asked.

I replied that it was new to me.

“To travel alone is to be alone and to make lone choices but to live alone is to be lonely” He replied in his typically philosophical French fashion, fiddling with his dragoon moustache, it was a strong growth and he knew this, wearing the bushy number with pride, he looked similar to a member of the cavalry regiment.

“Will you join us for a ‘boisson alcoolisée’ back at the hostel Wes?”  

“Of course” I replied.

I was quite happy to have run into Francoise.
We meandered our way through the crowds and down one of the tributaries that came off the square, the hostel was a five minute walk from where we had met and in that time we both didn’t speak, both only having been in the city for a couple of days we were still taking in the scenes around us, are faces painted with the glazed over expression of engrossed tourists. We came up to the door of the hostel; it was tucked away at the end of a side alley, so close to the chaos of the city but far from noise. All that stood opposite was a run down launderette, the owners never seemed to be inside, but on stools outside lost in each other’s ramblings. Francoise pressed the buzzer and the steel gate covering the rickety old door opened, the building was five stories, split into three floors for guests and two for the owner’s family and friends. On the roof, sat a terrace bar, it was a picturesque spot as it looked over the jagged slates that created the skyline of Istanbul. We started to climb the stairs, the first three floors pretty much silence, but the final two as they had been for the last couple days in captured the chaos of the city on two floors. Shouting, bawling and Turkish cursing mixed with the owners friends strumming upon a guitar, singing about their lost dreams as rock n roll waste a ways, it was a rowdy gathering that accompanied those two floors and neither of us wanted to get in their way so without saying a word in unison we quickened our climb.

Francoise led me over to the table, I had met the group the night before, they were all international students that had travelled to Istanbul to study, they were simply staying at the hostel until they found a place of their own. The first person to offer me a seat was Troy the American another stereotypical cliché. He was the sort of person that at 25 still only had the wit to muster up an insult about the size of someone’s dick. I could get over his humor but what riled me up was his banal ignorance of America’s relationship with Britain, the night before he had proceeded to shout in his annoyingly whiney accent,

“What has that tea drinking, biscuit eating island, actually done?”

I tried my best to ignore him, but he asked me about my fleeing friend.

“How’s your cheating buddy doing?”

I explained how he had confessed his adultery over an array of extremely expensive phone calls.

“Typical English cowardliness, befitting of a true pussy” Troy eloquently put.

Frederic jumped in and asked, “Was he alright before it happened?” Frederic had a portly build and was quite stumpy, a good face though and was always seen to be smiling, he really enjoyed pouring hot water over ice and watching it melt.  

“No” I replied

“I think he had been missing her and home”

“Ahh there we have it then, that must be part of the reason he told her then” Frederic logically pointed out.

It wasn’t until this moment that I thought that could be a feasible reason for him confessing, he had seemed less enthusiastic about our journey the last week or so.

At that moment the owners stumbled up onto the terrace it was during this time of evening they were often so drunk that they wanted all the guests in the hostel to listen to their heartache filled rock n roll.  They staggered over and started to involve us in their quarrel about who could write the best lyrics. The first one was a butch man who spoke of how he loved hooliganism in football but also the romantic sound of a piano and a clarinet together, somehow it didn’t fit. He had a beard that grew longer on his chin and was scraggly and overgrown, due to his size and the heat he was a man who would always sweat but never worked, and he constantly rubbed his belly after everything he did. The second man was tall but skinny with overgrown greasy hair that parted on one side, he also spoke of how romantic the blues were, and often spoke of how he had a pain in his chest, a metaphoric pain that only a woman could cure. The skinnier of the men sung his lyrics to the fat man, attempting to add a Chuck Berry croak,

“If the soul you release, the soul you will feel, the soul that is real” he bawled out with an emotional caw. A man I had not seen before was with them, he was swaying on his stool, his head moving with such drunken rolls it looked like it might fall of his shoulders.He proudly stated, “those words are not true, nothing in this world is true, you know nothing of music”

“You are too unhappy to understand” The fat man replied.

“This is true”, the mystery man said, “I can never be happy in this world, there is no home for me here”.

At this point the skinny man put down the guitar and asked me how my friend was.

“How is your crying companion?”

“On his way home.”

“Pshhhh, home what is home in this life” the cynical stranger spat.

“He told her then?” Ignoring the sad man’s statement.

“Yes, he thought it was for the best.”

“Does he not realize that women do exactly the same?”

“What do you mean?

“Women are just as unfaithful as men, your friend is a fool”

Francoise had been at the bar but heard this remark while passing me the beer he had bought me, he did not like it.

“You cannot call someone a fool for there honesty,” said Francoise.

I sipped the beer awkwardly. It’s true though, women are just as untrustworthy, she’s probably been all over the men back home while he was worried about one mistake” Troy boldly said while nodding at the skinny man who amusingly gave him no notice whatsoever.

I’d had enough of this conversation and this what seemed now disastrous trip, I thought of my friend sitting on his overpaid for seat nervously planning what he was going to say in his head, turning down the free food due to the remorse that prevented the need for food and in some ways I was worried Troy and the skinny man were right, it was true he had only made one mistake.