Out of Istanbul

by Bernard Ollivier

  My room costs seven million liras. It’s the first splurge of my journey. The lobby exudes bourgeois respectability. But from experience, I know that appearances can be deceiving. The prudent thing to do would be to first take a look at what they’re offering for that rate, but I’m unable, sensing once again that I might lose consciousness. An employee is given orders to take me to my room. Short on luck, the elevator’s not working. I let my pack slip off my shoulder and motion the young man to take it, as there’s no way I would be able to carry all that weight up even a single step. He casually grabs it but has to make a second attempt, as he was expecting it to be lighter. On the second floor, which I’m able to reach after several stops in the stairwell to catch my breath, he opens a door. As soon as I walk in, I can hear the leak hissing in the bathroom, but my focus, right now, is to get some sleep. I close the door behind the young man and make a mad dash for the bathroom. Diarrhea and vomiting: I’m emptying everything out. Finally a truce, and I head over to one of the two beds and let myself drop. One of the bed’s legs snaps off. I’m shivering. To warm myself up, I take the blankets from the second bed and pile them up on mine. The one I’ve lain down on feels like it’s going to collapse every time I move. I could care less, though, and fall asleep.

  For two days, all I can do is run back and forth to the bathroom. I have nothing left in my belly, yet endless contractions wring out my intestines. It isn’t long before I notice blood in my stool. In disregard of all the rules concerning food safety—which up till now I’ve tried the best I could to follow, although present circumstances suggest that I failed—I slake an unquenchable thirst from the tap. Ten minutes later, I return this water to the toilet bowl. A leak in a pipe attached to a wall has flooded the bathroom floor, such that each time I go in, I take an ice-cold footbath.

  The first morning, I asked the young employee who came to make my room to buy me some cooked rice from a restaurant nearby. I also asked for a phone in my room. He forgot. The next day, since he didn’t come to clean the room—he must have forgotten that, too—I risk a quick venture down to the lobby and back to ask once more for rice and a phone. I have to be quick about it, as another urgent need comes over me, which has to wait nevertheless for me to make it back up the stairs at the speed of a disabled old man. All my strength has left me. About midafternoon, the young man brings me the rice that he most likely cooked himself. He has no trouble remembering to charge me for it at full price. I grumble, but I’m at his mercy. His rice is tasteless and crunchy. I barely have the time to down two spoonfuls before I spit them back up. My stomach is on fire. Each time I go to the toilet, the pain is unbearable. I complained to the management about the pitiful state of the bed and the leak in the bathroom. The flippant young man offers to give me a room on the third floor. Why not the fifth? I must be the only guest in this hotel. I give up on the idea of heaving myself up an extra floor, certain that I’d never be able to get back down. So be it, I’ll put up with the footbaths.

  On the other hand, I put up a fight to get a telephone, which finally arrives in the evening. We struggle for an hour to install it, since the cord lacks a male connector. And the wall jack is located behind my bed, meaning it’s very hard to get to. After endless fiddling and failed attempts such that the whole dreadful time I want to kill him, the bungler finally manages to get a dial tone by shoving two stripped wires into the jack. On the first try, the bed moves and the wire falls out, and we have to start over. After he leaves, as soon as I lie back down, the wires come undone. I have to choose between sleeping or placing a phone call.

  My confidence in Anatolian medicine is very limited. From deep within my bag, I pull out a small “IMA” card—Inter Mutuelles Assistance—insurance coverage for the duration of my journey. After wearing myself out in my struggle to get the dial tone back, I manage to get through to them. They ask me to give them my number, and they’ll call me back. A few minutes later, the flippant young man knocks on my door: there’s a phone call for me, but the wires have slipped out again, and they can’t patch the call through to my room. We fiddle with the wires once more. The doctor who returns my call for a telephone consultation is a woman with a very reassuring voice. Her diagnosis is clear, unambiguous, and final: amebic dysentery. It’s a hard blow. From what I know, this is no minor illness. It once terrorized armies in the field, often killing more men than the bullets. The pleasant voice tells me that I have to take a particular medicine right away that contains a miracle molecule—offhand I can’t recall its name—and that’s sold under three different brand names, which I jot down. I’ll be able to find one of the three. It’s too late in the evening for me to go out looking for it now. I’m also dreading to have to make a trip downstairs and, even worse, to climb back up. I try to laugh at myself and at my sudden weakness, whereas, just two days ago, I felt invincible. I overcame a foot infection, forced marches, Kangals, almost going headfirst over a cliff, Turkish and Kurdish bandits, and soldiers; now here I am the victim of some microscopic bugs eating away at my intestines. How ironic. Humor is an excellent remedy when we’re afraid, but right now I need a good companion if I’m going to really get into it. All alone, I have to come to terms with my miserable innards and low spirits.

  The next morning, I venture out into the main street, which seems horribly noisy and chaotic. The nearest pharmacist, from what they told me at the hotel, is fifty meters away. A first miracle: the pharmacist is probably the only one who speaks English in all of Anatolia. A second miracle: he has the medicine. I return to my room, completely drained. As soon as I take the second dose, the treatment begins to take effect and the diarrhea lets up a little, allowing me to get some rest. From my bed, I can finally take in the view of Mount Ararat. Those who come after me in this room will be less fortunate, since two buildings are going up, and they’ll soon block the view.

  Majestic and crowned with snow, the mountain is superb. In the early morning, as the sun comes up, it looks as though it’s drowning in fog, lending it an even greater sense of mystery. And then, as the sun climbs higher in the sky, a veil of clouds comes to rest over its head, hiding it from view for the rest of the day. Mount Ararat is flanked by another, smaller volcanic cone that the Turks call “the mountain of a little pain.” As for Ararat, it goes by the name of Büyükacı Daği (bu-yu-kah’-djuh da’-hee), “the mountain of great pain.”

  Of course, one hand on my swollen, burning belly, the thought was already on my mind.

  * TN: The size of a square about 7 feet on each side.

  * The book was in fact banned by the Turkish government at the end of 1999, and its author risked prosecution for “damages to the armed forces’ morale.”

  CHAPTER XIII

  THE GREAT PAIN

  Feeling depressed over my illness, exhausted from my demise and from three days of forced fasting, I’m in no condition to head back out on the road. It’s a feat just to stand up. How many days will it take until I can walk and carry my gear? My stomach ravaged by amoebas, vomiting, shitting blood, and mucus: I’m a complete wreck. The first thing I need to do is change hotels. In this one, where there’s no food service and they force you choose between the bed and the telephone, the indifference of the extraordinarily incapable staff and the obligatory footbaths have succeeded in draining off whatever morale I had left.

  In the evening, feeling slightly better, I risk an expedition out into the main street. Along with July, the tourists are now here, almost all of them English-speaking. Flaunting their tans in shorts and T-shirts, they take themselves for adventure travelers as they drive about in four-wheel-drive vehicles, packed to the roof with a jumble of camping gear and clothing. We are on entirely different journeys. They cross the country, they view it and take pictures of it . . . but never walk through its front door. Aren’t I clever, bragging like this, telling myself that I, unlike them, am an authentic traveler! You must look like a doddering old fool, a quivering ghost, a poor soul lost in the Orient: such are the thoughts runnin
g through my mind, the lecture I give myself while stepping onto a scale that a shrewd kid has set out on the sidewalk, waiting for customers. I’m blown away by the number I read; I step off and check to be sure the device is properly calibrated. Another scale, with another boy next to it a little farther on, confirms the previous verdict: they both agree it’s really sixty kilos (132 pounds). In Istanbul, I weighed seventy-four (163 pounds); in Erzurum, just a week ago, I weighted seventy-one (157 pounds), after two months on the road. So I’ve lost eleven kilos (25 pounds) in less than three days.

  I witness a scene that for a few moments makes me forget the squeezing and stretching sensations tormenting me. On a street grocer’s cart set up in front of a store window, an old man is more slumped than seated on a pile of rags that at one time must have been blankets. His body seems to lack a spinal column, and his limbs are misshapen. With a trembling finger, he follows along lines in a Qur’an written in Arabic characters, while chanting in a soft voice, paying no heed to the passers-by, some of whom toss him coins or banknotes. Under the cart, two little scamps are seated cross-legged, as snotty and brown-skinned as can be imagined, playing cards. They laugh. Suddenly, the old man slams his book shut and slaps the palm of his hand three times on floor of the cart. The two kids crawl out from their shelter, and, without stopping, which proves how much this scenario is quite routine to them, they rush to take up their posts. One pulls on the cart while the other pushes, and they drive straight into the crowd, no doubt looking for a better location unless they’re taking their pious paralytic to the mosque, as it’s almost time for prayer.

  Before going back to my hotel, I visit another, one that’s more comfortable and less expensive. I search for an Internet “café” but come up empty-handed. “No coffee here,” an old Turk tells me, “only tea.” In the lobby of my fake three-star hotel, I tell them I’m leaving and ask that they prepare my bill for tomorrow morning. I notice that the manager is very displeased that I’m moving, so I anticipate a monumental rip-off. Then I hoist myself up to my room, where I collapse and sleep the whole night through.

  In the morning, as expected, I have to wage a minor war against the fleabag’s owner, who, for lack of customers, tries to fleece those he already has on hand. The “bill” is a ragged piece of grid paper on which he has scribbled an astronomical figure. The room rate he quoted me on the first day has tripled. I placed a thirty-second call to France, but according to him, the conversation lasted fifteen minutes. On top of it, he wants to charge me for the incoming call. When I threaten to go to the “polis,” he cuts the charges by two-thirds. What a good-for-nothing, small-time scoundrel, and a coward when it comes to the cops: precisely the kind of human worth keeping at arm’s length.

  The tourists at the Ararat Hotel are for the most part from Europe or America, shows-offs given to flaunting their Ray-Bans and safari hats and who don’t speak a lick of Turkish. Seeing that my look is completely different, I draw the sympathy of the staff, who are friendly to me, even pampering me. After checking to be sure there’s a telephone meter, I call my children, and then the IMA, to let them both know I’ve moved. A doctor calls me a short while later to ask how I’m doing: “You’ll need several weeks before you can start walking again,” he tells me. “In our opinion, you should be repatriated. We’re going to call our contact in Turkey, who will get in touch with you.”

  I hadn’t ruled the possibility out, but it’s a heavy blow. It’s true that my condition, at best, won’t let me get going again for another two or three weeks. I’m only a normal day’s walk away from the Iranian border, which is to say, thirty-five kilometers (22 miles), but what is in store for me there? Without a more detailed map, not knowing where the villages are, the only way for me to proceed is to walk from city to city. That means stages of at least forty kilometers (25 miles). In my condition, that’s unimaginable. And then there’s one other very worrisome problem, as it involves red tape. It’s already July 14, and my Iranian visa is only valid for two weeks. Since I cannot get back on the road again before the twenty-ninth at least, I’ll have to renew it. To do that, I have to go to either Paris or Istanbul, and then wait two weeks, which is the normal amount of time for it to be issued. There’s indeed an Iranian Consulate in Erzurum, but there the processing time is one month. In either case, the best I’ll be able to do is get back on the road around August 15, in the dog days of summer. For someone just recovering, it would be difficult to walk when the weather is at its hottest.

  I don’t know what to do with myself. Up till now, my routine was easy: walking, eating, finding shelter. All of a sudden, I’m faced with a great void. Common sense would dictate that I do nothing. But that’s something I can’t do. To kill time, stretched out on my bed, I thumb through the literature I have on Iran. I read that Tabriz, so close now at just over a week’s walk away, was, at the end of the sixteenth century, the world’s largest marketplace. The bazaar covered thirty square kilometers (12 square miles). Thirty square kilometers: can you even imagine? I cannot. Hard as I try, I cannot wrap my mind around such an array of stalls, heaps of treasure, piles of silk goods and brocade, pyramids of powders and spices, mountains of carpets including some of the most expensive in the world, and the falcon market—the best birds in all the Middle East; my imagination is limited by the Orient’s souks that I’ve seen with my own eyes. By dint of letting this fairyland of shimmering colors and spicy fragrances dance in my head, I blissfully fall asleep in Ali Baba’s cave.

  When it’s time for lunch, I attempt a quick foray out into the street. A mischief-maker accosts me, wanting to do a black-market exchange of Iranian rials for me. Unfortunately, that’s hardly a concern of mine right now. In what looks like a promising restaurant, I try to get some food into my stomach. Only three bites of rice, and I have to make a mad dash back to the hotel to spew it all up. I try to drink nonstop so that I don’t get too dehydrated. In a nutshell, I’m staying alive.

  I finally find an Internet café. Located on the second floor of a building, it wasn’t easy to see. To reach it, you first have to traverse the furniture seller’s shop—he’s the one who put up the money for it; zigzag your way around the beds, armchairs, and cupboards on display; and then head up a small spiral staircase in the back room. The clientele is mostly young: this is where they come to play video games and log onto hookup websites where they can chat up strangers with heady names, imagining them half-naked, lying lasciviously on silk pillows in some Western metropolis. In my inbox, I have news from my children and a message from Geneviève, a journalist friend who jokes about my sense of timing: “. . . You waltz into Istanbul for the opening arguments in Öcalan’s trail, then go to Erzurum in time for him to receive the death penalty, and then onto Iran for the student uprising. It’s a little too much for a retiree. When are you gonna stop following the news?”

  Back at my hotel, I collapse onto the bed, exhausted from my expedition. A little later, I wake up from a pleasant dream and return to nightmarish reality: I’m nailed to my bed, sick as a dog, in Doğubeyazıt. It’s late in the day. Will Mount Ararat, sublime and politely capped with a crown of clouds at this hour, be the endpoint of my journey? I still hold out hope. I drag myself over to the balcony and admire the view. Her Highness “the Great Pain” has pulled a veil across her face, turning a blind eye to my distress.

  The telephone rings, rousing me from my contemplation. It’s Doctor Günay, head of the IMA in Turkey, on the line from Istanbul. He has a warm voice and speaks French without the slightest accent, having grown up and studied much of his life in eastern France.

  “I’ve taken a look at your paperwork and spoke with the doctors who handled your case. I believe there’s no alternative: you have to return home. But I’m not sure how to go about it.”

  I’m indeed in no state to be moved. There’s no way I could board a plane as a regular passenger. I can’t sit upright for more than a few minutes. To get a couchette in an airplane, now that it’s high season, may require w
aiting several days. And my condition won’t allow it. Furthermore, I’d have to be taken to Erzurum in an ambulance, and then by plane to Ankara, where I’d have to change planes before continuing on to Istanbul. Going through Iran wouldn’t be any easier. Chartering a plane just for me seems excessive: I still have some way to go before I’ll be on a first-name basis with the Grim Reaper. Two hours later, the doctor/rescue worker calls me back and tells me that there’s only one solution: to return from Doğubeyazıt to Istanbul in an ambulance. A vehicle will leave the banks of the Bosporus later tonight and will arrive tomorrow evening. Two drivers and a nurse will accompany me back, but, Dr. Günay warns me, the crossing will be difficult and tiring. I can imagine, but I don’t have any other ideas, either. Especially since the pain is growing worse as the dysentery is subsiding. He confirms that in Iran there are student demonstrations and that the army’s cracking down hard. So I should have no regrets, he concludes, since it would have been difficult for me to continue.