The Move
I just moved - on Oct first.
I wasn’t looking for a place. I
was quite comfortable in my cozy little flat.
But then a friend told me that the flat directly across from hers was
now vacant, so I went to check it out.
The flat was far superior to mine--much bigger: 2 bedrooms instead of 1,
a large salon, a real kitchen, and a view of the Golden Horn. And it was less money. It was definitely an offer I would have been
silly to refuse.
But the move nearly done me in.
My friend Mehmet organized two men
to help me move. I of course expected
them to arrive in some sort of a moving van.
But no. They just arrived with a
lot of straps and this Turkish contraption that looks a little like a baby seat
that they strapped on their backs. They
then proceeded to lash my refrigerator onto the padded baby seat of the little
guy – and when I say little, I mean maybe two inches more than my tiny stature
of five feet, one and half inches - and bent over like a man with a really bad
case of osteoporosis, with sweat dripping down his nose, he hauled the frig
down the narrow steps, out onto the street, down the block, down the three sets
of steep, broken concrete steps to the street below, and then up the two
flights to my new flat.
Meanwhile the second man, tall and
lean, lashed about five boxes onto his back and bent over like the number 7,
holding tight to the ends of his canvas straps, he followed in the same path as
the little ‘strong man.’ They were like
two beasts of burden piled beyond comprehension. If they had been donkeys,
animal rights sympathizers would have held a protest.
And I ran alongside them, opening
the door of my new flat and then ran back with them to open the door of the
flat I was leaving. Back and forth. I
felt like i was in training for the step marathon. But I was just carrying a
plant or two each time. Or a light box
of something fragile.
Then a locksmith came to put some
real locks on my door because the locks that were on it were made for an inside
door. I could have broken in. A three-year-old could have broken in.
So a friend found me a
locksmith/carpenter. In his fifties,
tiny and slim, gray hair and close-cropped gray beard, in well-creased brown
slacks and a striped shirt, he scrutinized my door. “Maybe two hours,” he said in a dialect that
was hard for both me and my friend to understand.
Chuckling and rubbing his beard, he asked for tea and set to work, while
I rummaged through unpacked boxes searching for a cup to pour his tea into.
Four hours later he demanded food,
and my friend called the kebap shop at the top of the hill and asked if they
could deliver some food. Meanwhile, I realized there was no drinkable water, so
I ran out to the ‘bakkal’ to get a large bottle of water delivered.
When I returned the locksmith was
continuing to gouge out holes in the door, drill, and pound. The light left the sky. The moon rose, and finally, he told me he had
to go. The bottom lock worked from the
inside, but not the outside.
I was a prisoner in my own home
with nothing to eat other than some stale bread and tahini.
He didn’t return until the
following afternoon. He asked for his
tea and again began drilling and pounding and banging and screwing. I watched him try turning the keys to no avail,
and then unscrew, hammer, bang, pound, drill, screw and try again.
The sky grew dark. The moon rose. Darkness descended over Istanbul. The iman sang out his ‘Call to Prayer’ and
still the little locksmith continued.
“You can lock the bottom lock
inside and outside. I’ll come back
tomorrow and finish,” I managed to decipher his strange dialect.
it took him 3 days of banging and
drilling and then taking everything apart, and then trying again, over and
over, until my friend arrived and made him go to a hardware store to buy a
metal casing. And even then he kept screwing it into the side of the door,
trying the locks, finding they didn’t match up, unscrewing over and over, until
he finally got it to work.
My door looks like it was attacked
by an enraged bear. The top lock on the
inside of the door just has a gauged out hole for the key. But at least i can lock it from both the
inside and the outside.
At some point I had visions of this
little, elderly locksmith always being there. Always drilling and
pounding and hammering and screwing and unscrewing-- kinda like Sisyphus and his rock--and me getting older and older,
sitting at my kitchen table with thick black eyebrow hairs curling across my
forehead, an old lady's mustache and beard grizzling my aged, wrinkled face,
and the locksmith still drilling and pounding away.
And when you move into an
unfurnished flat in Turkey, there is absolutely nothing in it. No lights.
No appliances. Nothing. So, in order to move in, I had to get
someone to come and install lights and light fixtures so I could have some
light. But there were strange dangling wires and electrical sockets left over from the middle ages to be dealt with.
And at the end of my first day.
Filthy, exhausted, I got into the shower only to find the hot water
didn't work!
And I can't get the Water Company
to disconnect the water from my old flat because I need to give them a copy of
my landlady's identity card.
But one day down the road, I'll
look back on all this and laugh! Ha Ha! As I happily sip tea and gaze out onto
the Golden Horn in my lovely new apartment.
Want to move to Istanbul?
