The Indian Consulate

Aussies, Londoners, Estonians.

At Taksim Square. It is very quiet because, apparently in Turkey, 8:30am is the butt-crack of dawn.

We had an appointment at 9:15am the next morning at the Indian Consulate to apply for our visas. We  left home around 8am and managed to find it OK – it was maybe a 20 minute walk from our apartment. We got there early, and met with some other travellers – a London couple and an Estonian couple.  We thought we had the many thousands of documents needed in the correct numerical and alphabetical order required, as well as a sound knowledge of the secret hand-shake required in braille – but none of us did. We all ended up having to go to local cafes to hook into the wifi and complete what was needed. The consulate closes at11:30am each day, so we decided to try again the next day.

I drank a lot of beer (well, I had to buy something…) while Jesse did the necessary paperwork. Hey, we can’t all be heros. The Londoners managed to get it all done, but apparently the Aussies (well, me) were big fans of f#cking around. Oh well, life continues.

Tear Gas

When this happened, I told myself I wasn’t going to blog about it, as I didn’t want to worry family or friends. A day later, after the shock had worn off, I thought, “Nah, it was real and part of my story. And – what an amazing story.”

We were relaxing in our apartment in the afternoon, when we suddenly heard a series of loud bangs. We both assumed they were gunshots. We rushed to the windows to have a look outside. The human fixtures of the street were unmoved. The old Turkish men seated outside the café opposite barely looked up from their chais (cays). We shrugged it off and, knowing it was a public holiday, said, “Fireworks.”

The bangs continued to go off intermittently throughout the afternoon and early evening, very close to where we lived. Jesse and I were meeting up with our new London friends for dinner around 7:30pm at Taksim square. We didn’t realise it at the time, but Taksim is like the Times Square of New York. We got ready and left the house at 7:15pm and walked up the hill to the main road. We turned left, and started walking towards Taksim square. It would probably be a kilometre walk.

About 100 meters into our walk, we noticed something was wrong. The riot police, who we had noticed earlier in the day, seemed more active on the street. Then we noticed we were walking against the crowd – everyone seemed to be walking towards us, coughing. We got too close, and sure enough walked into a fog of tear gas. It really, really stung. I couldn’t imagine being in the thick of it – it seemed like enough would kill someone. There was a lot of shouting. Of course, not speaking the language and only being in the country for less than two days, we had no idea what was going on.

Rattled, we turned around and went back down our street. Home to roughly 14.5 million people, Istanbul is an almost incomprehensible maze of laneways and back alleyways. It is more common to get completely lost than not. I pity the poor bastards who have to Google Map it.

Needless to say, we got very, very lost and were walking for a very long time. We had not wifi access and couldn’t pull up a map on either of our phones. When we finally reached Taksim Square, it was 8:25pm and our friends were nowhere to be seen. We were both disappointed, but decided to go for a wander around and soak up the atmosphere. There were thousands of people about. We found an amazing street that had an impressive array of shops and malls on either side. There were plenty of Western shops – McDonalds, Starbucks, Burger King, Sony, Adidas, Gucci, Gap, etc etc etc.

We didn’t talk much as there was so much to soak up and take in. We wandered along, two in the throng of thousands, when something scary happened.

Somewhere in the crowd ahead, there was shouting, and then screaming. And then people began running fast back towards us. And then – the whole crowd turned, and suddenly hundreds of people were screaming and sprinting back down the street towards us.

We had no idea what was going on. No idea. Were there guns? Were there bulls? At the time, I felt very much like I was running with the bulls – not that I’ve done it, but it seemed to have a similar, desperate energy of getting away as soon as possible from an unpredictable yet potentially deadly danger. I desperately prayed that neither I nor anyone else would trip and fall, as the likelihood of death by stampede was fair. We managed to dart down an alleyway off the main street, and then jogged away without looking back. At that point, my sense of adventure was nil and I just wanted to get home as soon as possible. As we continued through the back lanes, we heard people saying the word, “Gas.” So the police had discharged more tear gas canisters into a calm and peaceful crowd filled with couples, families, and children, and then risked a stampede. Smart.

It took us a long time to get home. There was a lot of action around our area, and more than once we wandering into the tail end of a tear gas cloud. It f#cking hurt. Some nice local men warded us off a couple of times, by waving us away and saying, “Problem, problem,” in a very heart-felt way.

When we arrived home, we could still hear explosions very close to our house – just at the top of the street. They were very, very loud. We closed all the windows just in case any tear gas wafted our way. The explosions and yelling went well on through the night. As I lay in bed, I got a sense of how petrifying it must have been for citizens in Europe during the second world war, and how easy it would be for the military, police or unruly mobs to invade people’s homes. We went to sleep quickly and didn’t say much: I think we were both in shock. The next morning when I woke up I was still jittery.