Istanbul is Absurd

...but in a (mostly) good way. Here is a list of the top absurdities I've encountered since arriving last Monday.

TRAINS
We were the first people standing on an empty tram platform our first afternoon here. Within five minutes, hundreds of people swarmed around us and there was no where to move. As people negotiated their way on and off trains, they did what they had to do. Not a single frustrated word or angry look...

TRASH
I was stunned by our first walk on Istiklal Street. The street is lined with eateries, small shops, and international retailers. At parts, cars run across it and a "nostalgic" streetcar runs down it, but otherwise it's a pedestrian thoroughfare. And you see every kind of person you could imagine. I had just finished drinking a bottle of water and eating a simit (a kind of sesame coated bread ring they sell on the street here) and so had an empty bottle and paper wrapper to throw away, but could not find a trashcan anywhere. I was even more perplexed that I didn't see any trash on the street either. Maybe I wasn't looking hard enough. I got rid of my trash by leaving it on the table of an excellent pudding shop we had coffee and dessert at. And later that night as we walked around some back streets, we found all the trash. There were horrific piles of it at the edges of the empty streets and the occasional passerby would go on without a second glance. I guess somebody or something comes along in the night and deals with it. I saw a man sweeping a pile out of an alley, a cat going through some, and last night there was a young man rapidly sorting a pile almost as tall as he was into a big plastic sack.

RICE IN A MUSSEL
Walking by the water near the Galata Bridge one evening, I was excited by all the food vendors
since dinner was a few hours away and I was hungry. I went towards a man selling mussels out of a box and pointed at the big ones, paying one lira (70 cents) for two. He made a show of popping each one open, and as I ate I realized there was spiced rice stuffed inside the tasty bites of meat. How did that happen?

SHOE SHINE
Getting off the tram one day, my dad picked up the fallen brush of the shoe shine man who was walking in front of him. Upon exiting the station, my dad told us to hold up since the shoe shine man said he wanted to do him a favor for giving him his brush and proceeded to give my dad a quick shoe shine. My father asked us all if we had any small change and we managed to scare up a few coins. In the meantime, the shoe shine guy was quickly working on someone else who promptly gave him twenty lira (18 dollars). My dad produced his three lira, and the guy got upset and then regaled him with a story about how his daughter was in the hospital and asked for twenty, indicating his previous customer. We all walked away and the shoe shine man exclaimed into the air, probably cursing.

DUSTBUSTER
Our first dinner here was at a restaurant we'd wandered to after many twists and turns. It was an alright place, with padded chairs, cold beer, mediocre food, and terrible though charming service. After all our plates had been cleared, I saw the (hot) busboy coming towards our table with a dustbuster in hand. I knew what was going to happen next but couldn't believe it when he stopped at our table, turned the thing on, and dragged it across our table cloth, specifically targeting a pile of rice that had fallen off of my sister's plate. I couldn't believe it, but I looked across the table at her and she kept a straight face. When he came around the table and dustbusted a little bit more, my sister finally began to laugh and then of course I had to laugh too, and my dad, stoic that he is, kept a straight face.

CLEANING ME
Istanbul is currently packed with tourists and, consequently, at most restaurants, bazaars, and stores that cater to them/us there are men standing outside trying to tempt them/us in. A lot of times they are young and/or attractive and they say the damnedest things. They call us angels, ask if we are married, and constantly ask where we are from, try to shake our hands. It's unnerving to a certain extent and only fun when a certain element of the insincerity of these gestures is obvious. Last night, we walked back to our hotel down a street where most of the stores were closed. We passed by one shopkeeper who was moving some wares from the sidewalk into his store. I made eye contact and he enthusiastically said, "Hi!" We were waiting for the requisite follow-up but instead got: "I will clean you with this!" and he smiled, indicating the duster in his hand.

Men on Bad Mood Day

Yesterday, in my regular comings and goings, I came across a few men who stick in my memory:

1. A block from work in the morning, after I turned the corner of Montgomery and Pine, in San Francisco's financial district, I found myself walking behind a man. I think he had dirty blond hair, was middle-aged, white. As we both kept walking, I got closer and closer to him. This meant he was going slower. He wore the clothes of someone who worked in the neighborhood, gray slacks, black leather shoes, some sort of sports coat. But as I came closer still, I noticed colorless stains on his pants and then he leaned towards and then against the building we were walking next to. And as I passed him, I turned to look at his face, eyes almost closed, mouth open, tongue sticking slightly out. He fell against the building then, but somehow kept his legs moving forward and so did manage a few steps before I turned away and walked into the building where my office is.

2. On a happily empty train going to school midday, I was seated facing the profile of a man seated across the train's width from me. In his hands he held paper sack which seemed to contain a can, though he never drank from it, but instead kept it between his legs, holding it tightly. Every once in a while he would lean over and spit an unbelievably huge amount of clear liquid onto the ground in front of him. Over the course of the ride, he managed a small pool of his own spit-up at his feet.

3. Coming back from school that night, I noticed a man waiting with all of us home bound sfsu students on the outdoor train platform. He stuck out because he had with him two large clear plastic bags, each filled with many smaller bags, those bags filled with trash: empty bottles with a few drops of liquid inside, folded and smoothed piles of paper, and other things. He gracefully weaved his way up the platform, and as I passed him I noticed a stick-like thing in his hand. A cane? The train took forever to come, and so when it did, there was a sizable crowd gathered and we all crammed our way through the two tiny doors, everyone eager for the perfect seat. I took one in the middle of a five-seat row and opened my book to read. A few seconds later, the man with the bags came and sat down next to me. As he was carefully arranging all his things and turning to sit, I had the impulse to get up and move away, but something kept me there. He sat, and his sleeve brushed my arm and I think he apologized. He kept to himself, crossing his legs carefully as not to disturb his bags, under which, I noticed then, he had laid two pieces of cardboard, to keep the ground from getting dirty where he set them down. Then I turned just a few more degrees to see the stick he held and noticed it had a handle on end and pinchers on the other. There were no unpleasant odors and he was by far one of the best stranger seat companions I've had on the muni since I moved to San Francisco just over a year ago.

Yesterday, I was in a bad mood, all day coming and going as I regularly do, but with thoughts swirling, mouth down turned, little gray storm cloud just two feet above my head.