Son Bir Yolculuk - Part 4

By Jessup Eric William 

Dedicated to friends and friendship

1. After

When I woke up, I told myself that I had survived, but sometimes it feels like some strange mental gulf was opened in me then that persists to this day. A distance with others remains, an open space for doubt and indecision that I felt I had left behind in my more timid days was re-terraformed it seems. When I speak of this feeling today, the Dentist tells me in all his scientific reasoning, it’s because I’m a cancer sign, and my birth-time is probably also aligned with cancer. I don’t know what it means, but whenever he says that I tell myself he and I are full of shit and these feelings are as untrue as large tracts of this story. 

I pushed these feelings aside and helped clean up. The leftover mess of a war takes much longer to clean up than the war itself, and it looked to be the same for our hedonistic playpen. However, soon all the previous night’s cosmic passengers were awake and we made short order of our wreckage.

It had been a few days, a few hitch-hikes, and a few mental breakdowns since our last shower. So, we all packed into the car, left the cabin behind for good, and headed to the seaside of Akyaka to swim in the Azmak. 

Azmak is the name of a river within the sea along the town of Akyaka. A cold, fast-flowing stream of near fresh water is constantly running between the shoreline and a forest of reeds and bullrush. This water-lodged river can sweep you away in a heartbeat, and its icy cold waters can stop your heart too. It would be perfect for us today, like a well-needed slap from an angry father. We needed some tough, ice-cold love from Baba Azmak.

We jumped in our underwear and swim trunks, pulled away by the swift current as soon as we landed. One had to swim with all their might to stay in the same place. Eventually, you gave up and grabbed on to a tree branch, waited for a second to let the cold water collapse your chest a bit more, and then got out. 

We carried on like this for a few more minutes before Gelin let out a scream. In our fun, she had lost her wedding ring. We tried to find it in the shallow clear water, but the swift current and cold waters made it hard to look, and unlikely that it fell in one place and stayed. 

For 10 minutes we looked, nothing. She had tears in her eyes but seemed to be taking it all in stride. Maybe she was still high on acid. It would have helped at that moment. 

And with that final sad event, the carnage was over. The tribe was splitting up and going in different directions. The Painter and the Young-One would stay in the south to visit family, Damat and Gelin would see his family outside Izmir, the Bringer of Joy would remain under his bridge in Muğla, and the Care Bear would stay with him and try to smoke all his cigarettes. As for the rest of us, we would be sailing to Byzantium, returning to Istanbul. I’d be leaving behind a little of my soul, and Gelin all of her gold.

We said our goodbyes and gave our condolences to Gelin. There were 6 of us in the car; the Driver, the Dentist, the Nature, the Nutritionist, Padowan, and me. There would be no beers on the return road, no passing joints between cars, nor demented ancestral peppers along the way. Only stops for gas, smokes, coffee, and soup. We were depleted, drained physically, mentally, and psychically. I’m sure we talked, chatted, and laughed on the long journey back, but I don’t remember any of it, except for one detail.

After nearly the whole journey, we were crossing the Ozmangazı Bridge when the Driver’s door wouldn’t close. He had to drive the last hour with one hand on the wheel, and the other holding the door closed. He eventually pulled-over and wrapped the seatbelt around the handle to keep it tight, and risking his own life should it fail. God’s own driver I tell you.

He dropped off the Dentist and the Nature in Kadikoy, The Nutritionist, and Padowan in Taksim, before letting me go last, back in Balat for the last time.

2. Balat

I was back in the Painter and the Young-One’s house; no, my house. As I write this today I’ve outlasted them all in that place. The Painter and the Young-One have separated and moved out, Ahman the Syrian painter, who slept all day and painted the same gaunt, bald face of a man night after night, has moved across the Bosphorus, and Linda the itinerant journalist from Australia has done what itinerants do; she left. Besides the rotating Airbnb guests, I am all that’s left of our group in this building, our royal yurt. No more does the Care Bear, or the Damat stop by for a drink. No more does a casual drop-in turn into a floorboard bending dance party or a broken Syrtaki display. It’s a crooked house like any other in Balat now.

And when the Driver dropped me off, in the late-night of July 13, 2016, despite being all those things to me still, the house was empty of my tribe then. I was there all alone to recover from and assess the events of the last week and give my vital organs a break. Little did I know that it wouldn’t be my last time here, and what would happen before I had my seemingly last farewell.

After all, my time in Turkey was drawing to a close again. In 6 days I would be flying back to Canada, possibly to never see these beautiful mutants again, or not for many years. I was alone in Balat for now, but we were for damn sure going to reassemble for one last group tryst before I left. The Painter and the Young-One would return, and everyone else was still in Istanbul somewhere, surely they would come too.

I did little of significance the next day; call friends and family back home, update them on the insanity of the whole trip. I think in the evening, I walked around Balat and Ayvansaray, letting the colours and sounds enter my memory as clearly as possible. The evening is a beautiful time to walk on the southern shore of the Golden Horn. It is then that you can truly see why it earned such a name as golden. As the Fatih side of the estuary is covered in the shadow of the hills of Constantinople, the water and northern side pop with colour, and slowly take on a golden aura from the setting sun; even the shanties, the new high-rises, and the abandoned industrial buildings seem sprinkled with gold dust. 

I went down to the shoreline park with a bottle of beer and sat on a bench next to a man wearing a beat-up black suit jacket and pants. He was drinking a bottle of wine out of a black plastic bag. He looked at me and my own black bag and gave me a cheers, şerefe abi.

He soon took an interest in me, curious about what this foreigner was doing here drinking on his own. From there we had a broken conversation, and I learned that he lived in Balat, as Roma, and a retired meyhane musician, but sometimes would still play in Agora Meyhanesi. I impressed him with my knowledge of Turkish music, especially Sanat Müziği, the traditional music of the meyhane, his area of expertise. 

He pulled out his phone, an old Nokia flip, and loaded up what music he had saved on there. We cheered again and drank to the sounds of young Zeki Müren as the gold faded from the water. Soon we ran dry, but the man was excited to have a companion, to have another aksamcı. He offered to get another bottle of wine, but he didn’t have any money. My liver was still recovering, but I couldn’t say no to this rough diamond. I gave him 20 liras and waited. 

As I waited for his return, a young neighbourhood boy came up to me and asked for some money. I gave him a few Lira and he sat down to my left. I opened up my packet of sunflower seeds, gave him some, and asked him his name, but I cannot remember it. He spoke a mix of Turkish and Arabic. Soon the musician returned with a big bottle of wine. We sat back, the three of us, spitting seeds and drank wine (minus the boy) until the last light of the sun was gone behind the hills of Constantinople.

I returned to the house still glowing from the pleasantries. Our compound was a nondescript building on a short side street just off the main busy thoroughfare along the shoreline. It was three stories tall, standard around these parts, narrow, and painted a dirty sky blue. The building to the left was abandoned. Most of its walls were mere skeletons. For as long as I’d been around, it was partially boarded up, but from the right vantage point, you could see the pile-up of garbage, bottles, and glue bags that had accumulated through the years. The building on the right was a low rise business that faced towards the main road, some kind of water truck business. 

One of my first nights staying there, I was awoken by a loud zapping sound and saw what looked like flashes of tiny lightning out my window. When I looked out, I saw a man on the back end of a water tank truck. He was standing on the back ladder used to climb on top of trucks like that. He was smoking a cigarette and welding the very ladder that he was standing on. With one arm wrapped around one of the ladder rails, he turned his face - with a cigarette in mouth - away, without a welding mask, as he guessed at hitting the right spot with the red hot welder.

Across the street from us was the Roma community centre. Almost every weekend from spring to late fall, there was a wedding party on the top floor. From about 6 pm to midnight we could stand in our cumba, the distinct window bay of old buildings here, and watch the women dance, and the men push each other out on the street over parking spots or god knows what.

We were loud and unruly in our building, but the neighbourhood was louder and more unruly. Wedged between an abandoned house, a shady business, and a wedding dance hall, we could get away with a lot. Every other friend in Istanbul had to worry about noise, about neighbours, and about cops. The only thing we had to worry about was if the corner tekel would still be open and selling booze at 3 am. It almost always was.

I entered our dirty sky blue building and walked up to my room. There wasn’t a level board or a perpendicular line in the entire building. The doors were like jigsaw pieces from the wrong set, forced together by an impatient kid. If you put a bottle on the floor, it would immediately start rolling towards the stairs. And the stairs were hazards in their own right. I’m surprised the Care-Bear didn’t fall and split his head here. 

I climbed up the drunk stairs mostly sober to the second floor. I opened the polygonal door, flopped down in the bed next to the window where the man was welding a year ago, and went to bed, unsure of how I would whittle away the remaining days in Balat.

3. July 15, 2016

The day started like any other in mid-July in Istanbul. The sky was clear and sunny, hot but not oppressively so. I couldn’t remember what day of the week it was so I looked it up. July 15th, 2016 was a Friday, and as I recall it was shaping up to be a rather boring one for me with no one around. According to onthisday.com, some major events happened in the world that day. Stranger Things debuted to much acclaim on Netflix, and sadly, actress Gwyneth Paltrow and Coldplay singer Chris Martin filed for divorce after 12 years of marriage. Sandwiched in between those two items of information, with accompanying photos and bold colourful headlines, was one more historical event written in a small case, with no title, and no photos:

- Attempted military coup in Turkey fails, nearly 300 killed.

Not even worth a photo.

This date may not ring with meaning in much of the world, but over here it was the day that a new tuning fork was struck, and its frequency still reverberates in the air. At the very least it would be above Stranger Things’ debut, and Gwyneth and Chris’s mutual decoupling; I don’t know. However, at 5 pm that day, when the Driver called me to say hi, I and everyone else was unaware that Gwen and C-Mart’s bittersweet news would be outshone.

I got home from an early evening stroll and was waiting for the Driver. A few minutes earlier I had been looking up at an oddly low helicopter in the sky above Balat when he called me. In broken English, he told me that he was in the neighbourhood with a friend, and that he would come to say hello to me and drink some beers. He knew I was alone, so he brought an English speaking friend. Even on foot, still God’s own driver. 

He walked in with a very elegant looking woman named Özge. She introduced herself with French-laced English. She was tall and slender, with dark eyes, and darker bags under them. They came up to the top floor and we cracked a beer in the salon. Özge explained that they had come to Balat to walk around and watch the Roma street weddings that happen near every night in neighbouring Ayvansaray. I had heard earlier the odd-metered pounding of drums, and the distorted yelling on the village sound-system, but decided not to watch.

How I wish I did. Özge explained that at the wedding, the mother of the bride had centre stage. In the middle of the party, she stood, probably in an oddly shaped intersection, in an ad-hoc meydanı. She was surrounded by friends, family, and rivals, and the band constantly blared behind her.

There she stood, wobbling a little, microphone in hand and she made her speech to the crowd. Özge’s translation was roughly, “all of you thought my daughter was whore. Now look at her, she’s more beautiful than all your daughters. They’re the whores, and now mine’s married!” She made this appeal to the hearts and minds of her audience before stumbling off stage-left. 

We were laughing hysterically at this woman’s beauty when all of a sudden we all got messages on our phones. For me, it was from another Canadian friend in the city. 

Hey, did you hear about the tank at the Bosphorus Bridge? Know what’s going on?

I looked at the Driver and he was glued to his screen. Özge translated. There was a military presence at the bridge and the Airport.

Soon it became vague what was happening. There were tanks near the capitol building in Ankara as well. Then out of nowhere, an official statement on TRT from the military: Martial Law, do not go outside, return to your homes. The President was going to be arrested for violating the constitution they said. They had secured the main bridge of Istanbul, Ataturk Airport, and the Capitol building.

We took immediate action. No one had been living at the house for a few weeks now and we didn’t have the reserves for a siege or lockdown. We left and went to the tekel around the corner. There was a palpable tension in the air. Horns sounded louder, the wind felt strong, the garbage stank more, the cats still did not give a fuck. It was a short walk we made carelessly all the time, in drunken stupors for one last beer or in slippers for toilet paper, but it felt all too different that day.

We needed supplies, but we had to wait in the tekel, for someone had beat us to it. Now, you may think, based on this story, that I’m prone to exaggeration and fancy flights of over-dramatic description, but this is as accurate as it gets. At the cash of the tekel, talking quickly to Ömer the owner, was a man who must have immediately left for the shop when he heard the news. Here was a man that was literally buying every single beer left in the shop. This was not his first Turkish rodeo, not his first coup.

Perhaps he had lived, quite dryly too mind you, through the coup of 1980, or 1960, Who knows, but he would not go thirsty over the unknown amount of days that the country may or may not fall apart. We were outdone and would have to pivot. We waited until he loaded out, bought 6 big bottles of wine and a mickey of vodka, some cheese, 2 or 3 cans of beans, and 9 packs of cigarettes.

By this point, it was 10 or 1030 at night. I’m not sure. We had been glued to our phones, more thirsty for updates than we had ever been for a drink. I called all the friends I could, the Painter, the Young-One, the Dentist, Padowan, and the Nutritionist. They were all scattered and riding out the unknown wave coming our way as best they could. The Dentist got stuck coming home from work in Mecidiyeköy and was unable to cross the Bosphorus to get to his home in Kadıköy, where this all started no more than a week ago. The Bridges now belonged to the soldiers of the “Peace at Home Council”, and it was a no-go zone and soon to be worse. He made his way to Taksim to stay with Padowan and the Nutritionist. As for the Painter and the Young-One, they were off in the countryside outside of Izmir. Cowards!

It’s hard to remember the exact order of the 1 or 2 remaining hours of that day. We had a strange mix of many emotions: excitement, fear, apprehension, the anarchic joy of being drunk, in the middle of history, and gossiping about all the possibilities. The one thing I remember for sure was that the traffic was as bad as I’ve ever seen it. Looking out the top floor window, we could see and hear the seaside road along the Golden Horn, and the westbound lane was full, motionless, and loud, and the eastbound lane was quickly filling up with cars going the wrong way. Everyone was getting as far away as possible from Taksim, far away as possible from the Bridges. We were on our second bottle of wine, locked into a room together; myself, God’s own driver, and Özge the communist’s daughter.

This state of potential un-state-ness had been going on for a few hours before I realized an update to friends and family back home was necessary. I sent an email to my parents in Canada. I wasn’t sure where they were that day, so I wrote to both separately with as much dry, sober composure I could muster: Don't know if you've heard, but there seems to be an attempted coup happening in Turkey right now. I'm safe inside my place in Balat. Far from anything. But I'll stay inside and keep you updated.

After that, I then managed to call my sister who was drinking on a beach somewhere in Canada with friends. Something seemed off about all of this. We could go on Facebook. WhatsApp and Twitter still seemed active. Why wouldn’t they have shut those things down? Maybe they couldn’t. After all, the usurpers seemed like a small faction. But it’s as if they got their playbook from some dusty French manual on coup d’états written in 1968 by some Chilean Marxist Student Council. Step 1, secure the vital infrastructure, such as bridges and airports: check. Step 2, release a political manifesto to the state broadcaster announcing martial law and the impending arrest of the President: check. Step 3, victory.

What were they thinking? What were they going to do next, nail a list of grievances to a mosque door? Release carrier pigeons throughout the city with tiny propaganda pamphlets tied to their ankles? Make a radio address? These things didn’t matter anymore. These were not tech-savvy coup plotters; they should have consulted their grand-children for advice. Where were the tweets of challenge and the Instagram campaign promoting “peace at home”? Why was only TRT shut down, what about FOX and all the other government mouth-pieces on the air? Why could friends live stream videos of tanks rolling to the Bosphorus Bridge? 

While I was thinking this, the Communist’s Daughter realized that we had forgotten one vital item for our citadel flophouse; water. 

We forgot to buy water, brilliant. So, we once again headed out to the shop which was luckily still open. After getting a few 5-litre bottles, the Driver wanted to go check on his car, which was a few blocks away. We were about to continue walking when we saw five men up ahead, walking astride each other in the middle of the street. I didn’t get a good look at them before the Driver forced us to turn back, but they were all dressed in baggy loose white uniform-like clothes, shouting something from under their moustaches. We quickly got back into the house and abandoned the car for the night. Özge told me, they were Grey Wolves. 

Nationalist, militarist street hoodlums, known for curb-stomping and piping leftists in the 1970s and 80s. I don’t think the Grey Wolves were patrolling the neighbourhood with good intentions. Though I wondered whose side they would be on. They’re pro-military, pro-Türk first and foremost, but were also aligned with the current powers that be. They would think of themselves as Kemalist I guess, but their jack-booted tactics and strident nationalism made them a poor-fit in a pluralist democracy. So they were right at home here. 

But they had style. Those white shirts cut a mean figure in the hot summer wind that night. They look like they got angry waiting for the doctor after changing into hospital gowns, and took to the streets. Not to mention their moustaches. All five of them had the Grey Wolf trademark fu Manchu moustache that when combined with their overly-plucked eyebrows, represented three upside crescent moons, the symbol of their political party MHP. 

It was a good thing that we were back in the house and could avoid any more run-ins with fascist wolves awakening from hibernation, and that we had water now because the next event is when I finally started to get worried. 

All of a sudden, the President was addressing the nation. Live on Fox, he was face-timing the nation! His face was close to the lens of the camera, giving a slightly fish-bowl effect. His head and eyes seemed more rounded than usual, a little wet and clammy. Just behind his head was some wood paneling. He had escaped capture from his holiday resort in Marmaris.

I didn’t know where he was now while making his address, but that wood paneling brought me back to our cabin in the woods and the acid night. Perhaps he too was being hounded by swirling veneers or aggressive grain patterns with knotty eyes. To think, we were a few days and a few kilometers away from where he was now. We would have heard the helicopters maybe, or the gunshots if any. Thank every god on Earth we weren’t there now and neck-deep in the chemical -muş of LSD, while a nation of 80 million - with the 16th largest military in the world, in the most strategically vital piece of geography in human history, with tendrils in neighbouring countries, stable and unstable alike - was having a fucking coup. I was safe in my Balat palace. The only thing that would take it down would be an earthquake or gentrification, or us.

The president had made his plea to the nation. He was en route to Istanbul, in an airplane and coming to Atatürk Airport. It was going from sublime to surreal, Turkish polarity was on the brink of a compass debilitating switch. 

He ordered the citizens to take to the streets, to the meydanlar and defend democracy, defend the Turkish Republic. We were stunned. A few minutes ago it seemed like a new regime was about to take charge, that the 20-year political cycle of Turkey would finish its final repetitive act, and dispose of whatever man had acquired too much political power by using the mosques as their barracks, the domes their helmets, the minarets their bayonets, and the believers their soldiers, as the nationalist poet Ziya Gokalp once wrote. 

We had little time to dwell on this though. Shortly after the president’s best impression of the Blair Witch Project, the mosques and minarets responded. Just then, the buzz of microphones and sound systems broke through the din of honking horns. It was well past the time for the last azan of Isha’a, the late evening call to prayer, but all across the city Muezzins had returned to the thousands of mosques to sing. 

It can be a beautiful sound, the azan, especially along Haliç. With each starting at a different time, singing with a different timbre, from a different location, all the prayers weave together to form a sound collage of ascending and descending glissandos. But tonight, given the circumstances, it was spooky.

The mosque close to the house was late to the group call, as it always was. After the azan was finished something different happened. The Muezzin continued to talk in Turkish. He was giving instructions. Özge was there to translate it for me. Take to the streets! Take to the Squares. Defend Democracy! It wasn’t a call to prayer, it was a call to violence. A call for resistance. The Driver bobbed his head and gave out a long oooo ha. Things were about to get more -muş.

Soon there were reports of fighting on the bridge, fighting in Üsküdar, and mobs heading to the airport. Traffic picked up again with taxis speeding off in its direction. Were they going to be the foot soldiers of the coup plotters or soldiers of Gokalp’s poem following the orders from the Minaret? Or, were they simply overcharging whoever was going to greet the President at Terminal 1?

Maybe I was wrong about the coup plotters. They weren’t too archaic, with their bridge occupation on public broadcaster manifesto; they weren’t archaic enough! The true power was still in the lone towers next to the domes in every neighbourhood and on Face-Time of course.

By now, it was well past midnight and we had been frantically checking our phones for information and communicating with friends. We once thought we were on the dawn of a new day. If it were to be for better or worse, who knew, but it made the blood move. Now, it seemed that the President had out-foxed them all, and would survive the night. We could hear jets overhead and far off gunshots reverberated across the Bosphorus and the Golden Horn. But what could we do now but drink? So we attacked our cheap Balat wine with aplomb, and ourselves.

Özge was the first to turn dark, and who could blame her. She had been dumped by her boyfriend earlier in the day. After a long talk on the benefits of suicide, she revealed that her family was forced to flee after the 1980 coup in Turkey, as her parents were both known communists. This was a heavy day for her I’m sure. She was surrounded by dark energy, and I was flirting with her, and the Driver was not liking it, or so I thought. I don’t know, it was all becoming fog and -muş. 

We had finished most of the wine, but still had plenty of cigarettes, water, and canned food. I wanted to stay up and see what happened to this country, and Özge and me. Would the President’s facetime call to action lead to a failure of this sepia-toned putsch, or would the old olive-garb vanguard that is the Turkish military complete its 20-year cycle of re-asserting dominance?  Would either scenario lead to us falling into each other? How narcissistic was I to be interpreting a coup of great global and historical relevance this way? What would Rafe do?!

Then the news came in, early in the morning. The President had landed at the airport to a throng of rabid supporters. The few soldiers at the bridge had been overrun by a righteous mob of citizens, with many dead. The young tin soldiers had been rounded up, with rumours of deadly mob justice spreading on-line. The Parliament building, still smoking from tank artillery fire, was re-secured, and the supposed coup plotters were fleeing to Greece via helicopter across the Aegean sea. With that, the blood stopped moving, everyone’s sex drive vanished across the Aegean with the westerly winds of Zephyrus and Lips as well, and we went to bed.

4. Days After

I woke up on a couch the next day, with that communist’s daughter standing over me. Her back was half turned and the sun was shining through the cumba window, highlighting her skin and caramel hair. She was smoking a cigarette and thumbing through a small notebook, my notebook. I stirred and said good morning.
“Are you Jewish?” she asked.

I looked to confirm that my pants were still on and then said no.

“Mmm, you’re writing has lots of, how do you say, self-hate”

I mumbled something about all civilizations being based on some level of self-hate and asked for a cigarette. She threw my notebook on the table and sat down on the couch, and still with her back to me tossed a cigarette my way. She started rambling on about colonialism, the workers’ and ethnic revolution that needs to come from Latin America, Africa, and Asia, and why colonialists like me cannot expect the world to continue to function on our behalf forever.

What the fuck was she talking about? All this from a few lines from my notebook that were reminding me not to be a dusty-minded and moonstruck orientalist? From notes about a Roma musician and eating sunflower seeds with a boy? Does she include Turks and their Ottoman legacy in that catch-all barb colonialist? I was tired, hung-over, and hungry, and had no patience for beautiful, broken idealists in the morning, no matter how much I was charmed by her hair and eyes.

"Begone!” I said in my most colonial accent and went back to bed. She left the room and I then heard her pacing and muttering around the thin floors of the house. An hour or so later the two of them left the house to check in on some friends in Balat. I had had enough of her and decided to stay home by myself for a day or two. The Painter and the Young-One were returning in a day, so I wouldn’t be alone for too long. They would relieve my solo guard.

I stayed in the house for the remainder of the day, but soon got restless, and desired fresh air and a view besides the empty and silent wedding hall across the street. After the sun had set, I went along Haliç to the metro bridge, an ugly modern interruption in the skyline that offers a wonderful view of the historical old city. I would go there and take in Galata and Fatih, connected by the better bridge of Galatasaray, the true centre of the city. 

From the other side of Haliç, I heard gunshots of celebration and screeching tires. I made it past the underpass of the Atatürk bridge, almost to the Metro bridge, when I saw a group of tough-ass teenagers carrying sticks. I hesitated in the shadows of Haliç, next to the fishermen (no one would dare bother them) and waited to see what nonsense they were up to. Sure enough, they started wailing on a seeming stranger in the middle of the road before he ran off as they chased, laughed, and yelled. Maybe their fathers were wearing cheap white shirts and walking through Balata last night. I turned around, stuck to the shore, and returned to the house.

I decided to wait for my friends.

5. Departure

It was three days after the failed coup, and the President was set to celebrate the successful defense of his throne. For the last two days, all city buses had been free and would continue for a few more days still. I believe he had already passed an act of Parliament to commemorate for the first time the uninterrupted continuation of democracy; that all car, truck, and motorcycle horns must be honked ad nauseam until all the evil spirits of “Peace at Home” council were banished and driven off by the cacophony. 

Every second of the day in the house in Balat was filled with the trumpet blare of standard car horns, the menacing tubas of fire truck brass, rapid-fire harsh triplets of dolmüs and minibuses, and the occasional flat knife-like melody of the Godfather theme that some heavy-duty trucks have, and I’m sure every resident of Istanbul has been awoken by at least once. It was a din of crap, the lazy banging drums of victory. Were these people really happy? Or were they just caught up in the swell of patriotism, hoping not to be caught up in the undertow of the looming purge of enemies to come; perceived or real. Outdance your neighbour, outcheer your neighbour, outlast your neighbour.

All of these people were heading to Yenikapı to take part in a giant outdoor festival, a loud party for the silent majority of Turkey, those that had answered the call to storm the streets, and were now running, driving, and busing in to the heart of the city to answer the call to wave a flag. We had other plans though. It was my last night, and one more farewell party was in order. While most of the city was heading to Yenikapı, my friends were coming in the opposite direction to Balat. Not all, but most members of the tribe were returning; the Painter, the wonderful Young-One, the Driver, the Dentist, the Nature, the Nutritionist, and Padowan. A few other friends showed interest online and made their way over as well, some high-end replacements for The Scientist and the Sex-Machine. 

There was Okan, still one of the most handsome men I’ve ever met, and Badem the Trouble-maker. Near every time I had seen Badem something happen. Either we hooked up, or caused each other grief and ruined the other’s relationship. They were eager to join us for one last hoorah for me.

There was only one way to go out, with a rakı masası.

To all uninitiated yabancı out there or teetotaling Turks, you’re missing out. This is the standard drinking set-up for all things beautiful and bittersweet, for life in general. A large table of various meze is spread out into tiny dishes on a grand table, accompanied by the rejected nectar of the gods, rakı. This anise liquor isn’t for everyone, it took a while after my first sips with the Painter, the Care, and the Driver to embrace it, but now there is nothing better than a messy meyhane night with friends. And for my last night, we were going to do the home version, even better.

We didn’t have much space, but we always made do. Two small side tables were placed, well side by side, and the Painter’s home-made work desk table with laminated photos and newspaper clippings was laid on top to give the required space for everything little in the middle. 

Meanwhile, the rest of us prepared the meze. In the cramped kitchen, the Young-One prepared a salad, and Badem and I made plates of haydari, pickled vegetables, and other things while making way too much eye contact to be handling knives. Hips touched as we turned around from fridge to countertop, heads ducked under armpits, near pheromonal breasts and chests as plates of food were lifted above. We updated her on the week that was before the coup, the road trip, the stare down with the cops, the unknown peppers of my dishonour, the permanent sweat damage to our linen clothes at the wedding, and the fear and loathing in that cabin in the woods of Muğla. 

She laughed and chatted in her raspy and somewhat husky voice. She sounded like she was always talking in an intimate corner of a loud bar, and it was having its usual effect on me. Her and Okan were best friends and worked together in the film industry of Istanbul. She was talking with that specific meter and rhythm that Turkish English speakers have, with interesting clause formations, charmingly misused prepositions, and an over-abundance of exclamative ya’s. 

We released ourselves from the steam of the kitchen and went to the salon to create the rakı masası. The Painter took the honours as Saki and poured our drinks, and turned our rakı from clear to white. We were blaring sanat muziği, but it was no match for the passing horn section outside. The drive-by patriots had not let up all afternoon or evening. The sound of all those various car horns honking, weaving in and out, up and down, was like a brash continual call to prayer, a soundtrack for the first scene of a new act in the on-going play of the Republic of Turkey.

We tried to make light of it all. With every horn, we would yell “Democracy!” and take a swig of rakı. Not a wise drinking game, as we quickly finished a glass or two each in short order. In reality to play such a game would lead to chugging and death. So we sat around the table, laughed, threw food, remembered our times together, and played our most sentimental songs. The Painter was shirking his duties as Saki, the one who pours the raki. This is a very important title in the institution of rakı masası. Think of the saki as a conductor for an impending disaster, making sure that everyone hits the ground and reaches outer-space all at the same time. One person cannot be too much drunker than the others, and one cannot be too sober. We all must fall together; everyone -müş at once. Okan was laughing so hard I thought he was choking on turşu.

Yes, the Painter was shirking his duties, but it didn’t matter. The bottle was being passed around and we were being Saki to the person to our right, to the left, across the table, and to the sober patriots on the street. Put away your horns like cannons, good citizens of Turkey. Put away your minarets, like bayonets, turn off your free service buses like caravans of war, and come join us at an infinite table of laughing remorse, of intense quick friendships, and various yogurt dishes. Why aren’t they celebrating democracy like us? Why are they still honking their horns? You be kaymak, and I’ll be bal….

We had to top them, din for din. We turned up the music, removed the table, and started to dance. Hand upon shoulder, we formed one last misstepping Sirtaki, but what we lacked in coordination we made up for in effort. Jumping up and down on one foot, we bent those old Balat floorboards to near breaking as the bouzouki sped up. Soon we were just leaping in chaos, on to couches, yelling out windows, hitting lights, and doing impromptu jigs. As the song came to an end, the sound of horns returned, but for a few minutes, they were gone, and it was just us, winning the war of the ear.

The rakı was running low, so beer was brought in. and we descended into our usual mess. Turkish rock songs were mixed in with the Doors, Pink Floyd, and Queen. We did one more shot of rakı to the sound of car horns honking. We all laughed, but in the corner I saw Padowan, laughing still but rubbing his white knuckles together in nervousness. We were all putting on a show for each other, and they were doing it for my goodbye, but a giant, the loaming unknown was hovering above Padowan and all my friends. What the fuck would happen to this country? What consequences would come from this failed putsch? Would there ever be ‘peace at home’ again?

I looked around at all of them, at their faces. I tried to gauge their true feelings right now. There was energy, resistance, and indifference in all of them, but one could easily see the fear in each of them; in Padowan’s hands, in the Nutritionist’s changed laughter, in the Painter’s strained neck, in Badem’s cleavage. The Dentist was constantly standing and sitting down, unable to feel comfortable. The Nature kept saying we’re fucked, Istanbul will never be the same again. I looked to Okan to see his face, but he was gone, perhaps put to sleep by the heaviness of the night and the strength of the rakı.

But my friends refused to give up this last night. They put aside their fears for tomorrow, turned up the music, and danced around me like cult members to my totem. I was doing my patented move, a glorified sustained squat on the dance floor, as I could stay longer than anyone else, even the women. 

Except for Badem that is. She grabbed me and brought me away from the salon dance floor to the adjacent room. We both stuck our heads out the window for fresh air, like we had both done before about a year before when we first kissed. Now I turned my body around so my back was facing the window, the street full of still honking cars of victory. I bent over backwards until I was facing Haliç and the sprawling city on that near shore. I lifted my arms above my head and snaked my shoulders, neck, and head out the window. I then bent back as far as I could, until my feet were off the ground and my weight was being balanced on the windowsill, like a seesaw.

“DEMOCRACY! DEMOCRACY!”

Badem called me mad, pulled me back inside, and kissed me what felt like one last time. I kissed her back and we both rotated towards the bedroom like a drunk tornado. We left the party and our friends behind but jumped on top of all their bags and extra clothes spread out on the bed.

We quickly started pulling our clothes off, while still trying to kiss and grab every part of our bodies. Reaching down we could both tell we were ready and gave off a mutual grown as we struggled to get our pants off. I hoped my friends were turning the music up.

We were hard, we were loud. All the booze didn’t make a difference, for I had the blood pumping surge of a coup motivating me. No better way to say fuck you to tomorrow then to fuck today. Badem pushed me off and turned around, always a trouble maker.

We continued as intensely as before. We were furious. Maybe we wanted to speed things up so our tribe wouldn’t be left waiting. Near all of them were out there singing louder, dancing wilder, drinking more, all in an attempt to cover up our necessary tryst. How could we not finish like this? How could we not extend one more middle finger to what all of a sudden felt like the last week on Turkish earth? Was this careless sex a protest, or was I being an orientalist again?

Were we somehow defending all of our friends on the other side of the door and throughout the country? All of my tribe, O how we are lost now, each dispersed and wandering in a separate badland; no man or woman is an island, can’t even be one in a desert. Would I lose all of them with time? Ozan the Painter, Yagmur the Young-One, Çengis the Dentist, Doğa the Nature, Hadi the Driver, Tayfun the Care-Bear, the Damat, the Gelin (the Azmak is yours now for it has your ring), the Sex Machine, Padowan, the Nutritionist, the Bringer of Joy, and Okan, and especially Badem. Where the coup failed, we would succeed somehow.

The intensity increased and Badem flung her hair back and started to tremble. She let out a loud scream and threw her face into the pillow. I wasn’t far behind her as we both finished in unison, covered in sweat and ourselves. 

After a minute to catch our breath, we heard a sound, and there on the floor turned over Okan to look at us.

“Holy shit Okan, we didn’t know you were there. Sorry man.”

“No, no. It was beautiful”

It was beautiful, and in the morning I was gone.

Varmışım

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Jessup Eric William is the pen name of an English Teacher in Istanbul. He came here on a whim in 2015 and has returned to live, write, and experience the city. He is interested in combining personal experience, journalism, history, and myth into one form of story-telling.

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