The best word to describe the streets of Istanbul is "tortuous". They are winding, twisting, maze-like squiggles that somehow get deemed names even if they're only a block long. Buildings make their homes on any square of open space and continue up because the outer perimeters are made up of other buildings and roads that are also trying to find sunlight. Their weed-like appearance palpably produces a belittled feeling, in which I play a determined ant and the world is my obstacle. Up and down, around and through fallen trees. I seem to climb and climb but find myself back where I started, or maybe a hill up from there. I stop and rest only to gobble up my little ant bites of grub, extract what energy I can from them, and then continue on my arduous adventure around the weeds of Istanbul.
Now that you see me as an ant, you can imagine me being dropped among the weeds on my first day with a load of all that I plan to own for the next year. In reality my luggage weighs about 100 (+) pounds, but in the ant world, I'm certain it would match the load of a dead fly. A little big, a lot awkward, and very important only to me, really. Though, I do catch the other bugs eyeing up my load every so often, and it makes my little ant legs start to tread with the fervor of the great hummingbird's wings. I don't like the thought of losing my dead fly to a slug gang, or a cross-dressing cricket. It would be very unfair as I've worked very hard to earn the dead fly.
The beetle I rode in on from the airport got confused, as beetles often do. He got turned around when he flipped on his back and read the map. Very unfortunate for me and my fellow ant friend. We didn't know that beetles had this tendency. So, we got out where the beetle told us to get out, near a large open space known as Taksim Square. I believe it's a common location for insect rallies against the government of weeds. This would have been helpful had we known what it was, but as we were new ants on a new hill, we could only really look at one grain of sand at a time. Trying to piece all of those sand grains at once would have been like piecing the moon together by looking at all of its craters. Simply impossible.
My first impression from the sand grains and weeds I explored was that they all looked too alike to tell the difference. I could make out the main bug paths from the flattened reeds or lack thereof, but couldn't juxtapose myself next to any one thing that was on the map I had. We could make out one street and that was Tarlebashe, or what I now know as the street of doom for weak ants at night. The sun was setting and we began to meander down the street, using our antennae for information on our progress.
We bumped into logs and trees and many, many weeds. We wandered around them in circles to no avail. Finally, I told my ant friend to sit with our load of dead flies and wait near a Tarlebashe dragonfly bus stop while I wandered the streets. I figured it would be much quicker and more efficient for me, the less tired and better navigating ant to go off alone than the other, more sporadic and worrisome ant.
I walked in more circles and up and down more hills than I could remember. We had already wandered with our loads for an hour, so I was very tuckered and very much hoping to see something that resembled an ant nest. A few more twists and wicked turns and WHOOSH! Like the wind of a swooping swallow I was overcome with the gusts of Istikal, the shopping area for hip ants looking for a good time with the crickets and grasshoppers.
Wait, now. Though this may sound like a good thing (it was but...), but it wasn't on the map I had. I couldn't see it anywhere. Still, I trekked back to my fellow ant and let my antennae go wild with his and told him to follow me to the street of lights and safety! He let out a signal of pure glee as he told me that while he was waiting he had been affronted by two different cross-dressing crickets, and that he was certain he was standing on their corner. I smelled the air, nodded my head and quickly loaded our dead flies that were still being ogled by the slugs on the other corner. YIKES.
So he followed, and I led. On the way we decided that maybe we should just stay at a slug inn for the night, just so we're not wandering around entertainment central with everything we own, weak and vulnerable and ready for the taking.
By the time we found a slug inn among the weeds, we both were ready to collapse. Our load was tattered and wet, and we were in a state of delusion. A night of nestling on a bed made of reeds (not the best either), and a breakfast smelling of ground coffee beans and steamed milk, and we knew we'd be much more durable in the morning.
A gander at the international spider web was all that was needed to set us right. We perked up, loaded our stores and headed out in the direction opposite to where we had been headed the night before. Just 30 minutes and a few wrong turns then right turns then a hill or two later, we found our cricket landlord who would lead us just 5 minutes to our new ant hill's door.
I don't know if it sounds more or less difficult when I tell it from the view of an ant. But I think if I say that it only took us 14 hours, a good rest and a coffee to be little ant superstars, when it should have taken us 20 minutes had the beetle not been upside down, Tarlebashe not so dark and creepy, and the weeds so tall or the roads so tortuous. Not to mention our outlandish amount of baggage stessing our ant legs and mind the whole time.
It really is good to know where we are now, but recounting this first day of Istanbul confounds me as how we weren't picked off by the crickets or grasshoppers or slug gangs that were eyeing us newbies up. Perhaps they took pity on the frightened and lost little ants, or perhaps our dead flies didn't look as appetizing as I thought they looked. If that's the case, I'm going to start trying to look like a dead fly more often. Maybe I'll feel safer walking the Tarlebashe tortuous streets at night.
