Istanbul Calling: Trust the Chaos

A crash course in self-adjustment

Each week, a story prompting you to reflect on your choices, habits, and contexts. If you can relate, it may also inspire you.

---

My picture: beautiful Bosporus in the background, huddled concrete in the foreground

I’m writing this post from Istanbul, where I’m travelling for work. I wrote last week (We Get to Where We Already Are) about places on the map often being places of our minds; Istanbul is proving to be another one of those places for me.

This is my second time here.

The first time, Istanbul struck me as nightmarish. It’s huge. It’s crowded to the point of stifling. And it’s a total architectural chaos. An ocean of incoherence.

Everything that could go wrong, did so: pre-ordered taxis showing up for a different destination, 4-star hotel staff speaking no English, no coffee for breakfast (in Turkey!), conference organisers writing that we would be collected from the hotel without saying at what time, my conference badge being printed as “Ms Zoe” — and many, many more glitches. I got back home exhausted. My mind kept telling me this is the way this place works, but knowing it didn’t help much.

When I landed here, three days ago, I braced myself for another tsunami of alienness.

Actually, the landing itself was the first glitch. The plane almost touched ground, but then it went full throttle and heaved its beak again. The pilot came on a few minutes later, presumably explaining what went wrong, but I couldn’t make out what he was saying.

I thought: okay, now the next thing, the taxi driver’s not there!

I had a funny feeling, because I got no text, as I usually do, informing me that driver So-and-so is on his way and meeting me at point X.

The plane had a 45-minute delay, with the added 20 minutes caused by the aborted landing — so maybe the driver had simply left?

I pick up my luggage and head out. Nobody holding a sign with my name. I take a second round, just to make sure. Nothing.

No internet connection, because it’s not the European Union. Connecting to the airport wifi? You need to log in. I try to do so. Request a code to my phone. Code doesn’t arrive. Ask an info-point guy, where’s the Sixt office? and how can I get a bloody internet connection? He points me to the office, at the end of the huge concourse. And to an internet kiosk that requires me to scan my pass so I can generate a code for the internet connection.

I swipe my pass through, but the insolent machine keeps saying “Error. Please scan it properly” — excuse me? Properly, how?

The Sixt guy has no idea about pre-booked taxis but he can give me a car. Thanks, but no, thanks.

It’s 9.30 pm. I left home over twelve hours ago. Should I order a taxi from the taxi booth I can see ahead? But I only have a credit card, no cash, and I can’t get cash from my corporate card.

I try the airport wifi again, enter my phone number again, and, miraculously, I get the code. Internet connection, be blessed!

I fumble on the phone searching through the email messages to find the booking. There’s a driver’s name and a Turkish phone number. I call. He speaks Turkish. I speak English. He hangs up.

Okay, this clearly isn’t working like it usually does, like I’m used to. I need to get creative. I need to ask for help, because the system isn’t working on its own.

I’m asking a phone card seller, who speaks some English, to help. I call the Turkish driver again and hand over my phone to the guy. Yes, he says after hanging up, you go that way, Exit 14, go outside, and look for this: SS1 (he jots it down on a post-it note).

SS1? What’s that? But do I care, now?

Exit 14 is a short stroll from where passengers come out of customs. It’s right at the end of the concourse, the very last exit. I go out of the building and there are taxi drivers offering their services. There’s a cardboard behind a small crowd, written all over with names like Hilton, Sixt — and SS1!

And there’s my driver. Or his boss, actually. A young man. “How was I supposed to find you here?” I ask. He speaks enough English to show me he’s been calling me, but it must have been when I was still in the air. There’s no missed call on my phone.

SS1 is his company. Sixt? Oh, too complicated to explain.

Never mind. Can we please move on? It’s ten pm and my mind needs to retrieve some degree of order.

I sit in the car a few minutes later, and I wonder: how did they think I’d find the driver? Is it my job to find him?

Sixt did send me a notification that the driver’s on his way (not telling me how I can find the driver, though), but they sent it by email. Solid thinking.

But then, gliding on the motorway, watching the sprawling city of stifling chaos, it dawns on me:

Stop expecting things to run your way, Zoe. Give yourself a break.

Yes, Sixt usually sends you text messages when you land in London. Or Lisbon. Or Athens. Yes, drivers do wait inside the airport building, with your name on a tablet screen or on a piece of paper. Yes, planes do usually touch down the first time they attempt a landing.

But Istanbul is different.

English may not be very helpful? Ask a local for help. You don’t know if the driver is taking you to the right Hilton (there are three Hiltons, I think, in Istanbul)? You’ll see when you get there.

Which in fact happened.

The driver has an address, but I am 100% sure I reserved with another. I get out of the car, pick my trunk, but the driver says something to the portier. The portier says to me: “Leave your trunk here, go inside and see if this is the right Hilton, and he’ll wait here and take you to the other one if not.” I laugh. Really?

Really. It wasn’t the right Hilton. The driver had the right address. My memory was playing me tricks. My bad, for a change.

You see? that inner voice said to me. Things go wrong, but then they don’t, in the end. Trust the chaos, just a little bit.

And help might be on the way.

It’s enlightening when you realise the way things should work is so often just a construct. Your construct.

A Westerner once told me about Romania, “it’s incredible, for all that goes wrong here, things somehow, mysteriously, still do work!”

It’s when we’re forced to see that scanning “properly” is not the only way to go; that bookings don’t always follow the same processes; that a driver might still be waiting for you, without really waiting for you; that a lingua franca might be of little use; that what you need to be informed about is not always communicated as a matter of course; it’s such situations that jolt you into the awareness that alien worlds don’t have to be in different galaxies, but right here on planet Earth.

Have you ever felt the liberating effect of saying, I don’t know how this will work out, but I’ll just see when I get there?