“Unsafe?”
Junxiong Liu
“Mom, I am traveling to Istanbul after Christmas, alone.” I murmured in Mandarin, avoiding the word Turkey.
“Oh, OK. But wait, is it in Turkey?” she pressed me from the other end of the phone.
“Uhh…yeah, yeah, yes,” my voice again lowered.
“Don’t do it, please. Don’t. It is unsafe. Turkey is unsafe in 2015. It had an anti-China protest. It shot down a Russian jet. It is near Syria. It…”
“But it has good…kebabs!” I interrupted, finding the courage to raise my voice a bit.
“What did you say?”
“Uh…I said, my friends just went there…and they came back with no problems.”
“But you are alone. It is unsafe.”
I spent another half an hour, desperately repeating my stories of safe solo traveling, how far away Istanbul is from the war zone, etc. At last, Mom realized my determination, and gave up trying to persuade.
“OK. But you’d better be responsible for your decisions. You are an adult.” Then, she put the phone down.
I stood there still holding the phone, with only the busy signal “di..di..di…” resonating in my ears. I hung up, picked up my phone again, opened the browser, went to a Chinese news website, clicked the International section. I was unsure what I was doing, still hearing “Turkey is unsafe” hovering around my head.
A glimpse at my phone said “Istanbul airport explosion led to one death”. Headline.
Unsafe?
***
The plane landed in Istanbul on time. I went through customs, picked up my suitcases and exchanged some Turkish Liras as swiftly as I could. No problems. It was already 6:45 p.m. — I needed to go to the hotel before it got too dark just to be on the safe side. In the terminal, I took out a slip of paper that I had specially prepared for this trip — golden advice to battle with the infamous Istanbul taxi drivers. No need to look at them now – I could even recite them backwards: 8. Prepare small bill notes, 7. No night rate, 6. Use the meter, 5. No tipping…
Clenching my invaluable small paper while holding two huge suitcases in both hands, I took a deep breath and headed out of the brightly-lit airport terminal.
I wandered for a while, confused. Where is the line for the taxi?
I put down my suitcases, waving toward a taxi that seemed to be empty with my fist clenching. The driver slowed down, and pointed ahead. I followed his gesture, realizing with surprise that the line I had just missed was only about fifty meters away. How could I have missed it? I joined the line.
Finally it was my turn. After I climbed into the backseat, the tiny yellow Fiat rushed away from the terminal before I was completely sitting down. Fast and furious. I gave the driver the name and address of my hotel. He merely replied “OK,” voice as cold as the freezing night.
I felt extremely uncertain, and tried to think about what to do. Suddenly, I cannot remember anything. Oh! Ah right, I need to go through the checklist on my invaluable paper. But, wait…what is the first thing? Before my mind went completely blank, I finally realized that the paper was right in my hand. I read it through by my iPhone’s flashlight, and started to check around the taxi…
Damn, the meter was basically a random combination of #*$&. Rule 6! He is not using the meter. I pointed to the meter, “Excuse me, sir? Why…”
No need for the complete sentence. He shouted “No meter! No meter!” repetitively with almost unrecognizable English. Meanwhile, he suddenly slowed the car down, giving me a chance to escape.
“25.”
Not surprisingly, it was twice the normal meter fare, based on the price quoted I had looked up before the trip. I decided to argue after arrival, hoping for possible help from the hotel.
Silence. Fast and furious continued. My fist still clenched.
A tiny sense of safety came along when I noticed the big sign “Airport Best Hotel”. Good, but no one seems to be ready to help me outside. No one! Dark and quiet all around, I could only feel my pulse beating in my ears, blocking out everything besides that. I capitulated without any attempt to argue, and handed him 25 Liras. There seemed to be a nice smell of kebabs in the air, but it did not matter for now. I fled into the hotel.
Unsafe?
Maybe Mom was right.
***
It was a warm and sunny afternoon on the following day. I was exploring around Sultanahmet District, the historical area of Istanbul. Crowded as Manhattan, the area held all kinds of people wearing all kinds of expressions; shopkeepers and vendors desperately yelled to sell souvenirs to innocent tourists in Turkish, English, and even in Chinese. Locals wearing either thick beards or heavy masks hurried to their destination, probably used to this chaotic scene. Everything seemed the same as in other big cities, but my nervousness from last night frequently reminded me how unsafe this place might be. This place needs policemen, but where are they? I was ready to take a tram, but got stuck at the tram stop near the Blue Mosque because my transportation card ran out of money.
OK. That’s not a big problem. I trotted toward the nearest kiosk, holding the card and a wrinkled 10 Lira note. In front of the kiosk, a group of boys were gathering and talking, in a language that made no sense to me. As I approached, one of them stuck out his hand with a grin, but said nothing.
He smoothly unwrinkled the note, and inserted it into the kiosk with the card. It did not work- the machine refused the note. He looked a bit upset and blushed, while another shorter boy snatched the note and card from his hand.
The shorter boy did exactly the same thing, but it worked this time. He proudly pointed at the “success” sign on the screen and returned the card to me. The whole group cheered as if they had witnessed magic.
“Where are you from?” one of them asked.
“I am from China.” I replied with a smile that had been missing for two days.
“Ko-ni-chi-wa!”, the shortest boy confidently greeted me, grinning.
“Well, that is hello in Japanese. In Chinese, it is ‘Ni hao’.” I replied, with an English sentence long enough to confuse most of the Turkish people I had met.
They laughed, chatting in the language that still made no sense to me. Do they really understand what I have explained? Are they trying up to come up with new questions? Well, it didn’t seem to matter, and I couldn’t help laughing with them.
My tram arrived. I waved them goodbye, and they waved back, with genuine smiles that hadn’t changed from the first minute we met. Looking through the window of the tram, it was no longer the helpless highway I had encountered last night. Instead, it was a group of boys giggling and helping people add money to their cards. It was tourists like me shooting pictures and joking at each other’s poses. It was the military policemen I finally saw taking off their heavy helmets and leaning on the jeep, relaxed.
Unsafe?
Maybe Mom was wrong.
***
Two weeks later, Jan.12, 2016, a suicide bombing killed 12 people in Sultanahmet District, Istanbul, Turkey.
Unsafe?
Is Mom right, or wrong?
