Ramblings

Old fishermen never die. They just smell that way.

In Istanbul, there’s a group of old fishermen who sit on the Galata Bridge all day, pulling fish out of the Bosphorus. Sometimes old women will bargain with the fishermen over their catch, and if the fish is still alive, he’ll bang on the fish’s head with a spiked mallet until it stops wriggling around, then pull a huge knife out of his apron and cut the head off before slicing it open and ripping all its insides out. The old women will pay the fisherman, and she’ll walk away with a big bag of fish heads and guts.

At night the fishermen set up grills and you can get a big fillet of fish with some vegetables in a baguette for about 35 cents. Those are very good sandwiches, believe me. I must have eaten about a hundred of those sandwiches when I was over there.

I was enjoying a sandwich and watching people walk around one night, when this guy walked up to me and told me, “You aren’t from around here,” which I thought was pretty obvious, but it was the first time in Turkey someone had recognized me as a foreigner. All week people had been telling me that I looked Turkish. Women with babies had been stopping me in the street and asking me questions in Turkish, and then walking away all angry once it became clear I didn’t know what they were talking about.

This guy had a big, jagged scar running from his forehead, bisecting his right eyebrow and continuing through his eye and onto his cheek. It was the type of scar you would see on a villain in a bad action movie. His left eye was completely black, like his greasy, curly hair that nearly reached his waist, but his right eye was pale and milky, interlaced with scar tissue. He had clearly been knifed or something.

I kind of wanted to point to his eye and ask, “Hey, can you see out of that thing?” because it was all disfigured and gross, but that probably would have been rude. Instead I told him where I was from, that I was just another deficit-generating American.

“Ah, yes,” he said. “I hate America most times, but I love Americans.”

He told me his name was Darrak, and that he had been exiled from Syria for political reasons, which, I guess, explains his face. Again, I didn’t ask. He was waiting in Turkey for a few weeks until his paper work with the Canadian government went through, granting him asylum. Darrak was eating a fish sandwich with his girlfriend, Marguerite, who was a French journalist living in Istanbul. Unlike Darrack, she clearly disliked not only America, but most Americans as well. I didn’t see a point in pursuing an argument with her on that subject. I mean, I don’t like very many Americans either. She probably had very good reasons. Like, that we’re all assholes, unlike the French.

They were an odd couple because Darrack had the type of face that a sketch artist would draw, but was a really sociable and funny person, whereas Marguerite probably could have been a model but seemed to be completely devoid of a sense of humor. I don’t think I ever heard her laugh, or even say anything remotely interesting. Her personality was about as colorful as a bag of sand.

But, they were in love and made sure everyone knew it by making out as often as possible. It was kind of weird to watch, him being so ugly and mutilated and everything, but if I looked away all I could hear was the sound. Like someone sucking the juice out of a grapefruit.

Marguerite wiped off her mouth and said she wanted to go out. There was a band playing at a club she liked to go to, and Darrack asked me to join them. At first I didn’t want to, mainly because I didn’t want to have to watch them suck face all night, but I really didn’t have anything better to do. Besides finishing the rest of my sandwich I hadn’t made any other plans. Darrack insisted and said he would buy beer. I was in.

It was raining and we had to walk for about twenty minutes through these narrow alleys with doner kabob stands everywhere and guys trying to sell me carpets. The club was in this old, busted warehouse with broken windows and no lights. It was lit entirely by candles and a fireplace. All the beer was served out of huge coolers filled with ice because they didn’t have any refrigerators. It was awesome.

A punk band was playing on the stage and thrashing around, and when I went to the bar to get another beer, this Swedish guy offered me a clove cigarette—and I don’t normally smoke, but they smelled good and I working on about my ninth Turkish Efes Pilsner at that point—so I said I would have one.

So, I started sucking down these cigarettes and I couldn’t stop. I didn’t find out until last month that you should never inhale clove cigarettes. Apparently it’s comparable to inhaling a cigar, which is a common way to start puking*. But, I didn’t know this at the time so I was taking these really deep, long drags off these cigarettes and loving it. The Swedish guy kept offering more cigarettes to me, telling me to take as many as I wanted because cigarettes are so cheap in Turkey, saying that back in Stockholm a pack of cigarettes costs 58 Kronor or something, which of course is not a conversion I readily understand. He might as well have told me how much grain or bags of salt he would have to trade for a hectare of tobacco.

Meanwhile, this Swedish guy—Thorbjorn or Jorgen or Sigvard or something—was telling me this really long story about a trip to the Philippines he made a few months prior, but I wasn’t really paying attention because I was worried that I was going to become addicted to cigarettes before the night was over. My mother hates smoking and would never love me again. It would be much better for me to become addicted to hash or opium or horse tranquilizers while in Istanbul in my mother’s mind, because at least then I could go to rehab and get clean. Smokers never get clean, according to my mom. They just die a slow, lonely death inside an iron lung**.

By this point I was kind of zoned out, and I broke out of it as I was reaching for another cigarette from the pack—which Thorbjorn had conveniently left on the counter—and asking him for a light. As he gave me his lighter, Thorbjorn concluded his story by saying:

“And that’s why I had to leave my best friend in a mental hospital in Manila. I haven’t heard from him since. It’s been three months.”

I didn’t really know what to say. I mean, I didn’t really have anything to say because I hadn’t even been paying attention. I didn’t even know what this guy was talking about for the past ten minutes. I wanted to ask him to start over from the beginning, but I knew he would think I was the lamest person ever if I said, “Sorry I wasn’t paying attention. I was worried about how mad my mom would be if I got lung and throat cancer tonight.”

So, I said the only thing that I thought made sense at the time.

“That’s quite a story,” which it probably was. We sat there for a few minutes and it was kind of awkward and quiet, except for all the noise from the band. The band was playing really loud, which made me realize that they clearly had power for their amps, so I began asking myself why this place didn’t have any light bulbs.

Darrack came up to the bar and asked us to join him and a group of people who were playing asshole.

“The card game?” I asked. I thought it was strange that people actually played that game outside of keg parties in the Midwest, much less in a predominantly Muslim country.

“Oh, you know this game? Good, let’s play.” He was clearly very excited. I wanted to find Maguerite and make fun of her for making out with this guy all the time. He would make a great American.

We played with a large group of people, mostly Turks and a couple of Germans, but they were terrible and clearly didn’t know what they were doing. I was better than everyone else, except Darrack, and spent most of the night holding the rank of “Vice Kaiser.”

When I woke up the next morning it felt like someone had punched a couple of holes in my lungs. I learned my lesson, and I will never smoke an entire pack of clove cigarettes in one night again.

Clove cigarettes are still really good. 90,893 out of 100,000.

*Miraculously, I didn’t puke that night.
**My mother really should teach 7th grade health classes.