My early life as a new bride in this new land started with mostly me holding onto the seats of the transportation I used to take, be it private or public, and praying hard that my life wouldn’t end so soon.
Just imagine this: There you are, driving a car. You enter a street. That street is a two way street. It has two nicely built lanes for just two cars. Yet, people seem to park their cars on the left side and the right side of the street, leaving just enough space for one car to pass by. You are heading in one direction but there is also another car coming from the opposite side. Who will pass first? There is only enough space for one car to pass at a time. You or the other driver? You have the right to pass first as much as the other driver. It is a two-way street, after all. So what can you do?
Just imagine this: There you are, driving a car. You enter a street. That street is a two way street. It has two nicely built lanes for just two cars. Yet, people seem to park their cars on the left side and the right side of the street, leaving just enough space for one car to pass by. You are heading in one direction but there is also another car coming from the opposite side. Who will pass first? There is only enough space for one car to pass at a time. You or the other driver? You have the right to pass first as much as the other driver. It is a two-way street, after all. So what can you do?
Surprisingly, there is an unspoken culture here -- at least among the drivers. Someone will stop in the space in front of the car park entrance of an apartment (İstanbul is full of apartment buildings), letting the car coming from the opposite direction pass by. This is a systematic system where someone will pass first and someone will have to wait for his or her turn to pass next.
How do they decide who will pass first? I have no idea. Usually, the driver uses lights to signal that he or she will pass first while the other driver will wait patiently for his or her turn. This happens on most residential streets. What is so scary was (and still is), usually, each car will pass each other with just a few inches between the two. Of course sometimes both cars do want to pass through at the same time, and that is when you can start hearing honking and angry shouts. That for me was and is really scary.
For me, someone used to the wide roads of Malaysia, as well as being a bit (that’s an understatement!) afraid of tiny spaces and contact, I kept shrieking, “Halil! You are going to hit the other car,” to my hubby, irritating him a lot. Most drivers in İstanbul are so used to driving like this that they see nothing wrong with it.
My first public transportation experience was a blue minibus going to Kadıköy. The driver honked every time he saw a possible customer. As I entered the minibus, Halil and I were lucky enough to get a seat in the back of the minibus (it was a 14-seater minibus). I noticed that Halil took out the bus fare for both of us and passed the money to the person in front of him while mentioning our destination. The money made its way from one person to another and finally reached the driver. You can also pay the driver directly, but that may involve some acrobatics as the bus sways back and forth due to the roads and the frequent stops. It’s far easier to sit down and then pay as we did.
The driver, one hand holding the steering wheel, used his other hand to take the money. He counted the change and passed the money back, which made its way back to us eventually. But while the driver was counting the change, his eyes were fixed on the road as well as scanning for possible customers, whom he would honk at. All this in heavy traffic! That was totally multitasking, but to whose benefit? I, for one, was scared stiff! I kept praying, “Let me die another day, please.” But like I said, this is very common for the people here -- they didn’t even notice how scary such a situation was.
I was also shocked to see there were no bells in the minibus to ring to indicate that one would want to get off the bus. Instead, passengers just said, “musait bir yere,” (at the first free way).
When my sister, Yana, came to visit three years ago, I managed to observe her, to see whether I was the only one afraid of the roads and streets and Turkish driving. After her first minibus ride, she told me that her heart was about to drop to the floor, that she had the worst and scariest ride of her life and that she was not looking forward to another bus ride. That was only wishful thinking, of course, because for the next two months of her stay here, we had to take countless minibus rides as my husband Halil was in the military service.
This is the Turkish way of life on the road. Despite my heart rate rising every time such things happen, I think Turks are to be saluted because they are able to adapt to this scary and disastrous way of driving excellently. It’s excellent, but definitely scary. I think if you can drive on İstanbul’s streets, you definitely can drive anywhere in Malaysia.
And here I am; still in İstanbul after almost eight years. Am I still scared of being in both the public and private transportation here? You bet I am! No one can argue that life in İstanbul is indeed interesting -- if you have one adventurous soul. Will I ever be in the driver’s seat? No way!
06.11.2007
SIMAH ZAIM
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