Let's Talk TurkeyI guess I've grown too accustomed to a service economy, because the rainy week we spent in Istanbul left me longing for the sunny smiles of Hanoi. Oh, we passed the time pleasantly enough. Walking the hills of the ancient and still beautiful city, pausing now and then to visit the sights, the boys and I spent our days between architectural marvels, excursions through the grand bazaar and of course lots and lots of rug shopping. It turns out that shopping for kilims is an ideal way to spend an afternoon with 8-month old twins. After a couple of hours strapped in their car seats, the boys always welcomed the chance to be cut loose and crawl across the open space of a rug shop while I sipped apple tea and did my best to feign interest in this jijim or that sumak. I fancied myself a connoisseur by the end of the week. When the salesman would inevitably indicate the pile of twenty plus rugs he and his assistants had laid before me and say "Now, I'll take them back one at a time and you can tell me which you like." I would confidently reply, "There are only three pieces that interest me, the two tribal sofras and that Turkmenistan kilim." I would get his initial asking prices, not really caring what they were, as none were as nice as the one Amy and I saw on our first day and eventually bought on our last. Repacking my now exercised boys into their car seats, I would make my exit telling the proprietor that I needed to bring my wife back to see the rugs before making any decisions. A fact I believe each and every merchant knew the moment I pushed the stroller into their shop. The Turks consider themselves the outgoing, demonstrative and child-loving siblings of the European brotherhood. And compared to the British, perhaps they are, but I found them no more so than the average octogenarian at a Connecticut Stop and Shop. Pushing the boys along the steep cobblestoned streets of Sultanahmet, the standard conversation was a simple and restrained, "Ichis?", "Ichis.", "Mashallah." ("Twins?", "Twins.", "God Bless.") Rarely did it delve deeper into age or sex, and never did the crowds, which we've grown so used to in the rest of Asia, form. Of course the second half of that self-evaluation is equally false. Despite their soon to be successful efforts to join the EU, the Turks are not Europeans even on the western shores of the Golden Horn. They may have donned the attire of Old Europe -- in this case jeans, sport coats with vests, and duck-billed caps -- but I wear a sarong around the house and that hardly qualifies me for an Indonesian passport. There can be no doubt that Istanbul, or rather Constantinople, was once the pinnacle of civilization. Hagia Sophia, the Blue Mosque and Topkapi Palace prove that with a truly awe-inspiring magnificence. But it is as if after 2,000 years of unrivaled greatness nestled in the crossroads of history, the Turks took a 500 year siesta, were recently roused and with sleep-encrusted eyes and bed-tousled hair have shambled only as far forward as the middle of the 20th century. No offense intended and granting the existence of numerous exceptions, on the whole the Turks are not a classically beautiful people. They are built like the cargo ships that make the Bosphorus, meter for meter, the busiest waterway in the world. The women are broad shouldered and horse faced and the men have hands like sledge hammers. 50 years ago Attaturk himself told them that they were European and now imbued with a physical strength that breeds what might be referred to as stoicism but is more closely related to a teenager's slack-jawed apathy, they stubbornly refuse to admit the truth of the matter. This same acute mental rigidity hobbles what is a genuine desire to be helpful and turns the Turks into a singularly useless people. I needed to repair a flat tire on our stroller one rainy morning and made my way to a city block stretch of underpass where two stories of bicycle and stroller shops sat amid the roar of passing traffic and the diesel fumes of a busy bus terminal. "Perfect," I thought and proceeded to explain my trouble to the nearest merchant by pressing the flat of my thumb into the pliant tire. He directed me across the way to the one shop on the street whose steel shutter was still closed and locked. I repeated this process at four other shops and each time received the same response. Despite all outward appearances -- there must have been over a thousand bicycles of varying shapes and sizes displayed in that underpass -- they couldn't help me. The neighboring shopkeeper assured me that the repair place would be open in 45 minutes. After an hour and a half of stool-sitting and pointlessly studying the disembarking bus passengers for the tell-tale signals -- hands reaching into pockets for keys or eyes moving to assess the foreigner sitting in front of his shop -- that would let me know that the proprietor had arrived, I began to pester. "Wouldn't an inner-tube from one of the kid's bikes work as a replacement?" I asked by performing a side-by-side comparison. "No, they are too fat" he gesticulated in response. "Didn't he have anything that might work in a pinch?" I inquired by rummaging through the random piles of tools strewn about and in doing so answered my own question when I came across the patch kit that was exactly what I needed. He looked surprised that such a thing would exist in any bicycle shop let alone his, and needed prompting to dig out a makeshift but well-worn tire spoon. Together we identified the pin hole in the tube by dunking it in a bucket of filthy mop water, an action I had to instigate as he was prepared to call it quits after a visual inspection failed to locate the culprit. Neglecting to rough-up the tube or to allow the sealant enough time to set properly, his attempt to apply the patch failed miserably. Over an hour late to meet Amy for a day of sight-seeing, and wildly frustrated at his ineptitude, I cold-shouldered him out of the way and proceeded to apply the patch, put the tube and tire back on the rim, and pump air back into the now working wheel as he looked on with vague signs of interest. This all contrasts starkly with my experience yesterday as I took the rear stroller wheels to be trued in Hanoi. The Turkish Air luggage handlers had managed to bend both wheels out of shape. This from the same airline whose check-in counter representative confidently and repeatedly reassured us that our bags could be checked all the way through to Hanoi despite a change of airports in Paris. All we had to do was to remember to show the claim ticket when we checked in for our second flight. In a perverse sense he was right. When we flashed our claim stubs to the Vietnam Air representative she was horrified at such a blunder. Bags could not possibly be transferred from Orly to Charles de Gaul. She very kindly started a frantic search to find out how to deal with this problem -- at one point suggesting our options would be a two day layover in Paris or getting on the flight and kissing our luggage goodbye -- and with considerable brow-beating managed to get Turkish Air to acknowledge that something had to be done. With lingering reservations on both sides she put us on the plane to Hanoi. When we landed we found that she had pushed the process further along and had a representative waiting to reassure us that our bags were indeed on the way -- flying back from Orly to Istanbul, then to Bangkok, on to Ho Chi Minh City, and eventually to Hanoi -- and would be delivered to our home the next day. So yesterday mornng, planning to take them to a downtown bike store, I had the bent wheels tied to the basket of my bicycle. This obviously marked me as a man in need of repair work. Within the first block I received offers of help from three different cyclo drivers. The fellow who I ended up using quickly saw the trouble, knew where I lived, the name of our nanny and without asking delivered the trued tires to our home later that afternoon. There is much to be said for such can do attitude. My sense of Turkish helpfulness is best epitomized by the approach the touts use around Istanbul's tourist centers. "Please, don't misunderstand me," they begin. "I am not a tour guide. But I would like to show you some carpets at my rug store." This is akin to stopping someone on the streets of New York and saying "Don't get me wrong, I am not a personal injury lawyer. I am a tele-marketer and may I talk to you about your long distance calling plan." |
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