The Infamous Arrival

My arrival in the Istanbul, Atatürk Airport was quite indicative of the way I would be treated for the duration of my two-week orientation.

I walked out of a small door after schlepping my luggage from the baggage claim to find easily one hundred and fifty faces with tongues wagging, and twice the number of hands waving voraciously as I stood stunned and scared staring at this sea of confusion. Most were holding signs in their hands, equipped with words in languages I had never seen before, and their mouths were shouting these languages at me like spitfire.

Abruptly, I jerked my head down and made for the only direction of less chaos, my luggage in pursuit.

This turned out to be my first error made on Turkish soil for my driver was one of these hand waving tongue waggers, waiting dutifully for my acknowledgment, which he didn’t receive until about twenty minutes later after I had perched myself at a Starbucks, asked a man (who didn’t speak English) where to buy a phone card, then asked him how to operate one, and then actually operate it. The phone card operation provided a call home to mother saying I was alive but lost and wasn’t sure what to do or where to go—which is not the worst thing, but definitely not the best thing a mother who is roughly five thousand miles away can hear at three o’clock in the morning via cell phone from her youngest child. The second phone call was made to the hotel I was supposedly staying at.

The concierge mumble jumbled something that I would soon learn was, “Merhaba.” Turkish for, you guessed it, “Hello.” In my panic I began rattling off in English about my situation, that I was calling to see if my group was there and would someone please tell me how to get there or connect me with someone who knows what I should do. Somewhere in the confusion I must have (thankfully) said the two magic words:

“Georgetown University.”

Speedily, the receiver on the other end was handed to my program director, Professor Kay Ebel, a fiery, extremely intelligent, little thing and the one reason I have not been swept off into some dark alley and kidnapped while here. I explained to her what was going on with me, which was not much. A simple, “I’m here, and I’m confused” more than sufficed. More mumble jumble as she conversed with the concierge and then communicated something to the extent of, “Heidi, you’re driver is still there waiting for you. He has a sign with the name of our hotel: Turkmen Hotel. Go find it.” So off I went, more schlepping, until I spotted the guilty party. We made eye contact, he pointed to his sign, I smiled weakly, and he threw his arms up in the air as if to say, “For Allah’s sake, where have you been???”

I should mention, to give my program coordinators the credit they deserve, that everyone in our program received a hefty-defty pre-orientation packet with information about our hotel, contact numbers, where to go upon arrival, that there would be a driver waiting or each one of us with a sign that read “HOYA” on it. However, let me reiterate my stupor and exhaustion, and also mention that the sign definitely did not say “HOYA,” but rather some horrendous misspelling of my name and the name of the hotel, of which I wasn’t aware at the point of confrontation with the certain sea of chaos, and which also contains a “u” with two dots over it. Gah.

To continue, I was placed in a van-like mobile with another girl who was in her mid twenties but actually not on the Georgetown Program at all. She was the assistant to the Vice President of the Chanel Watch Department in Manhattan. We chatted about fashion for a bit (my only other real true love next to writing) and our reasons for coming to Turkey. After a while our driver shushed us and pointed out the window. “Sea of Marmara,” he managed, with accents on all the wrong syllables. I finally realized what was around me. A vast blue sea on one side dotted with huge ships and a mosque with minarets, domes, and everything mosque-ish on the other. Women in head scarves walked the sidewalks. (Although not all are covered of course. Turkey is a secular country, after all.) Huge stonewalls lined the road and the Sea of Marmara. I would learn these walls were left over from the city’s Byzantine past, and shielded Constantinople’s only landward side for more than a thousand years. Suddenly, I came too and realized Sarah, as I learned her name was, and I were gapping out of the window for nearly ten minutes. I imagine we must have seemed like two country girls coming to city for the first time or even just two Americans coming to Istanbul for the first time, which is actually quite a bit more exotic than the former analogy.

Once I reached the hotel, I met my professor and my bed for the next two weeks. It was near frustrating to not be able to say a simple “thank you” to the man who helped me with my bags to my room. And can anyone figure out why people on the other side of the Atlantic have elevators the size of coat closets? Because I have found this to be true for France as well, and it boggles my mind. Anyway, once I had safely made it to my room, which resembled a nicer hostel, I almost collapsed on my bed when I noticed the door leading out to what happened to be a balcony. I stepped outside, and the view I saw screamed, “Welcome to Turkey!”

I went back into my room, laid down on my bed, and feel quickly into a deep sleep.