Talking Turkey

Istanbul came as a blast of the unexpected. Despite the reams of tourist reports, travel guides and accounts of friends and acquaintances that were read or listened to with avaricious eagerness, I was blown away by the city from the time we stepped out of the clammy insides of our aircraft to the crisp cool of the sky blue streets.

I was not prepared for the chill in the air, having boarded the aircraft with expectations of a Mediterranean summer; nor the aquamarine haze that the sea threw over the city.

I was not prepared for the grandeur that the city wore with callous ease and it was the first time, I really got the lines of a poem that I had loved without ever understanding its true import:

A starlit or a moonlit dome disdains
All that man is,
All mere complexities,
The fury and the mire of human veins

— Byzantium by W B Yeats

But more than anything else, the thing that took my breath away was the flowers. There were flowers everywhere – leaning off the white railings of balconies, running by the sides of the sidewalks and sitting pretty in bunches in the arms of men and women as they walked past. And the colours, ranging from orange to bluish purple, clashed in glorious abandon with the white of the houses, the grey of the streets and the pale sun in the sky.

The flowers set the tone for our encounters with the city of Istanbul and as we travelled down the Aegean coast, with the ruins, the people and the beaches that we went to. The streets were lit up with men dressed in purple (without seeming in any way out of place as they might elsewhere) while in another place, at another time a purple headscarf drew us in. And the Grand Bazaar, with its trademark blue pottery and the red and black engravings of flowers, leaves and dervishes on plates and bowls reinforced the city’s bold colours.

It was not just Istanbul that wore its colours with pride. The entire countryside, the ruins and even the museums, the mosques and the churches made for an awesome canvas.  Turkey was a complete invasion of all our senses – we could feel and taste every part of the trip or rather the people and the places made sure we did.

The other big surprise was the language. Although it seemed incomprehensible when spoken, the words on the hoardings, on instruction leaflets and the street signboards clanged in a familiar tone. It started with the aircraft and a safety leaflet that said ‘Turk Hava yollari’ in which hava stood for air.

Excited by a word, the four of us found ourselves turning language detectives. We spotted Sekker (sugar) on the sachets that were placed beside cups of cay (pronounced chai). We paid heed when we saw a sign saying dikkat which warned us off work in progress at old buildings and on the streets. We saw how a drink could make one meshur (famous) on a hoarding with a popular actor playing model.  Then there was sabun (soap), maidan (field), gul (flower) and can pronounced jan (heart) – all words that stole our hearts away.

The words had all arrived in Turkey from Persia, the same place they undertook their journey to India. And strangely the ties that bound these people in faraway continents keep their strength even today.

For us as tourists, this trip was not just realising a dream but getting drawn into a scheme of things that is bigger, more ancient and definitely grander than any of us. And as travel is wont to do, it opened our minds and hearts to the differences that make up the world.
 
The trip to Turkey was our first one out of the country as a family. And we had debated long and hard, most of the time in our minds, about the need to do a foreign trip that touched the popular locales, especially since our family includes two girls: one teen and one nearly-there teen who may have wanted the regular circuit. But having done this trip, I can safely recommend that everyone – no matter age, gender or disposition – should do it once in their lifetime.