Departure Day

I know I promısed weekly posts but for the fırst few days there ıs a lot more to report The punctuatıon may be awkward for awhıle as the keyboard I am usıng keeps returnıng to Turkısh Note the lack of dots on most of the i,s Thıs ıs true only for thıs brıef ıntroductıon The actual entry below has proper punctuatıon and i,s because I copıed ıt from the entrıes I made on my lıttle computer rather than the departmental computer I am usıng for thıs ıntroductıon

Thıs post represents Monday Sept 14 despıte the date ıt was entered I wıll have no Internet access for several days durıng the holıdays whıch start thıs weekend So thıs ıs ıt for a whıle More on the holıdays -- a real bıg deal here lıke our Chrıstmas -- ın a later post So sorry for the lack of punctuatıon

Monday, Sept. 14, 2009 – Departure Day

After Anna successfully dropped us off at Bradley airport, our flight to JFK was uneventful. But, once in New York, we experienced a new variant of flight delay at JFK, one I hadn’t encountered, nor even heard of before.

Amidst the cacophony of the JFK airport – blaring TV, lots of people, construction about 100 feet away within the terminal – I vaguely heard the word “Istanbul” on one of the ubiquitous announcements. Getting up to investigate, I find that our flight is boarding – 45 minutes before departure, much earlier than we expected. Quickly grabbing our bags, we boarded unevenfully into the largest airplane I’ve been in in years. Then we sat – and sat – and sat – for three hours. “We will be departing in a few minutes” came over the intercom many, many times, in both English and Turkish. The problem? No, waiting for clearance was not the issue; that would have been normal for JFK. Instead, some people had their baggage loaded onto the plane, but not themselves. Naturally, the baggage had to be removed (it’s the law), necessitating taking all the rolling bins of baggage out of the plane to search for the offending pieces. That having been done, the passengers show up after all! So the luggage goes back in the plane, only to have one of the bin locks in the cargo section malfunction. The airline mechanics come to the rescue, by which time people on the plane are asking—who are these people who can hold up a plane full of others for hours? Well, finally, all seems well until another plane blocks our way out of the gate for yet another delay. By now, we’re assuming another two hour wait for clearance to take off but, thank heavens, that took only fifteen minutes or so. So here I am on the plane, wondering how complicated it will be when we inevitably miss our connecting flight from Istanbul to Ankara. Interestingly, though, we keep getting contradictory messages from the pilot about just how long this flight will be (it’s either 7 ½ hours or 9 ½ hours, depending on the announcement – it keeps changing. If 7 ½ it may be possible for us to make our connecting flight). Here’s hoping! And here comes our complimentary beverage. Sign off.

Once we actually got into the air, the flight was quite comfortable, the food edible, and Larry and I had the only empty seat on the plane between us, which made the flight even more comfortable (lots of leg room, too!). And somehow, despite the long delay at JFK, and the fact that the flight was nine and a half hours we made our connection in time. I dont get it. But, of course, our luggage didn’t. Despite the smooth flight, Murphy’s law clearly was not finished with us, and continued until we reached our apartment, with all kinds of unexpected complications between the airport and “home.”

Once there, our landlord showed us the apartment, spending an inordinate amount of time showing us how to operate the keys for the three locked doors that gave us access to our new home. Meanwhile, our friend, Meldan (and Larry’s new department head) picked us up to take us shopping—on the Bilkent campus, no less, where we lived fifteen years ago – then to dinner, where we met with Gulriz Buken, another old Turkish friend, for a terrific meze and fish dinner in a very nice restaurant on the Hacettepe campus. We waited until sundown to enter the restaurant, as it is still Ramadan (Ramazan in Turkey) here, and people do not eat while the sun is out.

Over dinner, we conspired to get Larry and me out of the apartment. As we were still in semi shock over the location of our apartment, and hadn’t slept in heaven knows how long, the discussion was quite disjointed. It was immediately clear though that the apartment we had arranged via email would be an impossibility. Only one mile from the Hacettepe campus, we nonetheless had no way to get there except to rely on others to drive us. The as-the-bird-flies mile distance was impassable by foot, necessitating climbs over forbidding fencing, trudging through ravines, around boulders, mud, scrub brush and other detritus. The road from the apartment, which was a small section of a large house in a sterile gated community, wound for about five or more miles along a badly paved, narrow, pock-marked, sidewalk-less, unlit road that seemed more like a large goat path. It passed through a village, half of which consisted of empty crumbling buildings. And the DOGS. Aiieeee! Large wild dogs everywhere, even in the gated community.

When we arranged for the apartment, I asked if it was easily accessible to Hacettepe and to shops by foot or by bus. The owner responded yes to both. Although he had spent 19 years in the U.S., his idea of “accessible,” or “walkable” was clearly different from ours. And the buses ran once in the morning, and once late in the afternoon; even then, they were in no way “accessible,” dropping us off in what looked like more wilderness, outside the gate of the complex. And those DOGS.

Larry and I were utterly dismayed and knew we would have felt trapped there, with no easy way to get back and forth to campus, or any other place. So, over dinner, we figured out an alternative to our living arrangement. (Our friends were furious about the apartment, not only the horrible location, but the expense, which clearly was excessive). Of course, had they checked it out sooner than one day before our arrival, we might have avoided the prolonged and very unpleasant encounter with the landlord when we returned after dinner to pick up the few things that we had carried on the plane, and tell him that we will not be able to stay.

We offered a week’s rent to thank him for preparing the apartment for us. He wanted two months’ rent. It got heated. We offered $500; he wanted $2000. Although he eventually came down to $1000, I wouldn’t budge. Only Larry’s extraordinary diplomacy, and the fact that it was the most sacred holiday of the year in Turkey (the anniversary of Muhammad’s birth), ended the dispute. He accepted the $500, to nobody’s satisfaction. But it was resolved, and we left there quickly, feeling just short of giddy from relief.

So where are we staying? Our friend Gulriz has an apartment in town, with three bedrooms upstairs. She is in poor health and has difficulty with the stairs. We are sleeping in one of the bedrooms. Our stuff is still somewhere in Istanbul. The rest of the apartment is packed floor to ceiling with stuff—much of which is from her 99 year old mother’s apartment, from which the matriarch was moved, to a convalescent home after suffering a stroke several months ago. Over the next week, we will help pack her stuff and move it and all the excess furniture to Gulriz’s retirement house in Bodrum, on the Mediterranean. After that, we will share her apartment as best we can, helping her as needed, and working hard to get her to stop smoking (at her request), in hopes that she can regain her health and her ability to function. So, we are helping each other.

We have a pleasant place to live, in a real neighborhood, with lots of activities around us – restaurants, cafes, boutiques, banks, and so on – and lots of great places to walk. (We can even walk to the nursing home to visit Mama Ayse). And, so far as I can tell, there are no wild dogs. (Did I mention those dogs?). And, even though we are several miles from Hacettepe, the University bus will pick us up in the morning, and bring us back around 6:00 at a bus stop nearby. Gulriz is even going to look into adding us to her car insurance, so we can use her car when necessary. We were trying to avoid having a car, both for the expense, and for our nerves—the drivers here are very agressıve, as are the pedestrians, but we may reconsider, so long as I don’t have to drive in too much traffic, or on the highways. I will have to conjure up my old Boston assertive driving skills.

This was our first day out of Hampton, Connecticut. I wonder why I feel so tired?