All My Things Re-reconsidered

At 6 a.m. in the transfer terminal of Nadi Airport, in Fiji, I found a shower. The bathroom downstairs near the first-class lounges was unlocked, unattended, and unoccupied, so I helped myself to warm water and pink liquid hand soap. I had no towel with me (using only carry-on luggage for this 3-week trip to three countries, and feeling quite smug about it) but dried myself with my bathing suit and an old bra, the one I’d been wearing since leaving Florida, and in LA for a day, and on the overnight flight to Fiji.

It’s a relic, this bra — 10 years old, the cotton worn thin in places and worn out to holes in others, and useless as a supportive garment. I planned to wear it one last time on the first leg of this journey, where comfort mattered more than appearance, and then throw it away. It’s disposable clothing. But as I reached towards the trash can, meaning to drop in the soggy, stinky ball of material balled in my fist, I was stopped by seeing a scrap of red yarn.

     

That one inch of red, sewn with one stitch and then knotted in the elastic, was a remnant of my first trip to Bali in 2002. Ten years ago, newly emigrated to Australia and still not a citizen, I had to leave the country every 4 months to renew my visa. So I took a holiday to Bali with my Australian partner, Nicole. While staying at a casual beach-side resort, we’d taken our laundry to the strip of shops and cafes in the village, where we were relieved of our bundle and our chore by two young women. They inventoried, listed, marked with thread, washed, dried, folded our laundry and returned it with huge smiles and warm greetings to our hotel room the next day, wrapped in brown paper, for about $9. Each item was marked with a bit of bright red yarn, which we deduced was used to distinguish our laundry from other people’s in the washing machine.
     
The two weeks we were on that trip, we were also closing on the purchase of our first house, a condo in a Melbourne suburb. It was the first house either of us would own, and the beginning of our life together.    

A decade later nearly to the week, I’m dripping in a steamy windowless airport bathroom, trying to throw away the bra I wore on that trip. It’s worn out. I don’t need it anymore. I’m traveling lightly as I fly into Melbourne for what might be the last time. 

     
Nic and I sold our condo a year ago, and then, 6 days before we were due to leave on an extended trip to Europe, she broke up with me. All of our belongings except what we were taking on vacation were in storage for six months. I had no time and no ability to sort them and to figure what I would need for my life without her.
     

I went alone to Europe for four months, and then I went to Florida to live near my parents, and pretty early and often after we split up, Nic said she’d made a mistake in breaking up with me – I agreed — and she wanted to get back together. She said she’d meet me in Europe, but she didn’t, and then she said she’d meet me in Florida, but she didn’t, and now she has a new girlfriend. Our plans to reunite and repair and resume our relationship have gone from being on hold to being off.
     
 I am now going back to Melbourne and the storage unit, to sort out my stuff, doing what I didn’t have time to do last year. In the next 13 days I will examine, evaluate, touch and decide on every single item in a 10-cubic-metre storage unit, and each thing I will give away, sell, or ship to myself. There will be no more storage after I get on my return flight in 2 weeks’ time, and so, presumably, also there will be no question of my coming back.

I look at the small red knot, with frayed ends, against the dingy and sodden white cloth. I will not throw it out, yet. I want to show it to Nic, one more time.
     

We were amazed that our nine Australian dollars — about enough to pay for a suit to be dry-cleaned, at home — could buy such painstaking work from the two washer-women. The difference in pay for their labor and our own shocked us. On my hourly wage at that time, it would have taken me nine minutes to earn $9. It wasn’t that we felt we were underpaying them — that $9 would buy a lot more for them in Bali than it would for us in Oz. And our standards of living were probably not all that different, in terms of what we ate and were we lived and how we got around. If it took each of them, say, an hour to do our clothes, and that work earned them enough for a couple of days’ groceries, it was relatively similar to our earning potential.

 
But the work they did seemed different: their was manual labor while ours, ostensibly, was not. But Nic, a reference librarian, had to have a shoulder replacement from handling books, and I, a reporter in Parliament, had to take several months off work to have physical therapy for my left arm and hand, because of strain from typing. I wondered if the Balinese women got such injuries from their jobs, and if they did, if they got treatment.

The bit of yarn brought back all that reflection, that awareness of difference and similarity that is the heart of travel. It also brought back pleasant memories. I remember sitting on some low, shallow steps at the entry to a shop where Nic was buying postcards — for which she did not bargain, thus adding incrementally to the imbalance in prices paid by tourists — and one of the many slim, saronged women who were standing around the shop in their flip-flops, either working in the store or spending time with friends who worked there, started chatting to me. She, very short, was about on eye level with my head as I sat on the low step, with my knees up around my ears. Seeing my belly protruding between my legs, she said, in a friendly way, “You going to have baby?”
     

 Aghast, embarrassed, and laughing, I said, “No, I’m just fat.” All the ladies laughed, and so did Nic and I, though I sounded a little high-pitched.
     

Later on, another local, used to spotting tourists from different parts of the world, told Nic she looked as if she came from Stuttgart: we didn’t know if it was Nic’s auburn complexion, her sturdy build, or something else (her refusal to bargain?) that made them make that mistake, and we wondered which was worse: to be thought pregnant, or German.

 At a lush tropical spa, in a shady private outdoor courtyard with a waterfall for background music, Nic and I got a “couples massage” that included oils and creams and rubs and much lovely attention to various parts of our bodies. We shared a milk bath. We drank a strange, opaque, hot fruit-and-cereal beverage. The two slim, beautiful, long-limbed Balinese masseuses helped us shower off the salt scrub, as unselfconscious with us as if we’d been toddlers, not grown-up women and lovers.
  

 I have no other mementoes from that trip.

 

 I will be meeting Nic at Melbourne Airport in 12 hours, and soon after that I will throw away that bra.

     
 And then I have to sort out all the other stuff in storage. One way would be to select and save only things I can remember now, that is, the things I have actually missed in the year since i last saw them, to wit.:
     
    1)  My cookbooks. My bound, fluttering, pages-falling-out, heavy binder of my own collection of recipes, the Esalen cookbook, and my Cold Pasta paperback. My Calphalon omelette pan and soup pot. My Wusthof  knives.
     

    2) Canadian artist Jillian Tebbitt’s charcoal-and-ink paintings from her “threshold” series, each about five foot high, which were framed in beautiful silver-and-rust frames and which hung asymmetrically over our staircase in Melbourne. Also some portraits of me and my mother drawn by my late friend Richard Illsley.
     
    3) The wardrobe. It’s the only piece of furniture I shipped out to Oz in 2001, and the only one I care about. About 150 years old, it’s either French or English, and I got it when we moved into an old house in England when I was 16 — it had been left behind by the previous, French, owners, who must have been either very sad to let it go, or crazy. It’s a medium-dark wood, inlaid with lighter pieces in irregular, soft shapes, like bows and ribbons with long curling ends cascading down the sides of the bevelled mirror. The ribbon-ends are tapered, flowing and symmetrical, the opposite of the chewed-looking torn off yarn ribbon on my bra — and I have never seen any inlay so beautiful and unusual. 

It would cost me at least $1000 to ship it to the USA. I could get perhaps that much, or perhaps much less, if I sold it to an auction house. I have no job and no regular income beyond a modest amount from the proceeds of the sale of my house. It’s the only piece of furniture I own or care about. It’s beautiful. There are other beautiful wardrobes in the world; the world is full of lovely things that other people have had to give up or sell when they’ve moved, and i could buy one with the money I got from selling this one. None of the other beautiful pieces were part of my life when I was 16. It’s only furniture. It’s the only furniture I own.

If I can’t decide what to do with that wardrobe, and if I can’t bear to throw out a wet, twelve-year-old undergarment that no longer serves its purpose, how can I give up on my relationship — a civil union, and essentially a marriage — of twelve years? I can’t imagine how I will do this.

     
All I know is that it’s related: how I make decisions on the stuff in the storage locker is related to, and affects, and is affected by, how I make decisions in my heart.  But right now, I don’t know how I will manage either one.

 

Where have I been?

Many of you have written asking various forms of the title question (“Where have I been?”) in varying degrees of irritation /bemusement / relief when you did not receive any Blogodonia posts after late September. Well, I was all over the place, to wit, viz,  after leaving Europe in late September, I went back to Florida via stops in New Jersey with Paul; Philly with Miho; Sy, Norma, Tim, Krista, and Heather (and kids) in Chapel Hill;  and Alabama with Leslie. Then, between October to May I was in England (twice) on press trips, and in between  I was changing my abode in Florida frequently. Such fun is living out of a suitcase, re-usable green bags, and the back of my niece’s old Honda, that I’ve started a new game. It’s called “Where’s Jill?” or in the vernacular, “Where the bloody hell is she now?”

Today’s “Where’s Jill?” quiz offers three hints: 1) It’s a major international airport. 2) It’s called the mile-high city. 3) I am en route from TPA (Tampa, Florida) to LAX (Los Angeles, California). I have nostalgic feelings about this airport from the early 1980s, when I discovered the “chapel” on the second floor and spent a peaceful afternoon between flights, sleeping on a red-cushioned pew, in total solitude. Those were of course the pre-Home Security days, when you could be free of human company and surveillance in an airport as long as you were seeking out the  presence of The Divine.

Today, though, I’ve found a new area of the airport to enjoy. It’s unusual  in that it is not crowded on a Saturday afternoon, and there are plenty of seats, although sadly not the kind one can lie down across. Still, even with ample seating downstairs, I noticed the green grass above me: the upper realms of the hangar-like terminal were unoccupied, so I took the escalator up to a huge, open area of which one tiny room off to one side is apparently an employee break room.  Now I have to myself a space roughly the size of a huge penthouse, with at least 20 seats all available to me, and a view of the concourse and the gate below, and NO ONE else is here!

I came up here hoping to nap, but I’ve turned into one of those sad people you see at airports, surrounded by computer equipment and hunched over a couple of small screens while holding a phone. I am using my phone, my Kindle, and my netbook, and the best way to access them all while remaining within reach of the electrical outlet is for me to sit on the dusty, dirty carpet. So I am.

I am en route to Melbourne, Australia, on a journey that will last about 4 days — I left Florida on Saturday and will arrive Melbourne I hope Tuesday night, and even including the loss of 24 hours due to the International Dateline, it’s still a big trip. I am spending Saturday night with my Scottish friend Vicky, who lives in LA, and whom I haven’t seen in about 2 years, which will be great fun, but the rest of the journey between hemispheres is not going to be nearly as  pleasant as it will be to drink G&Ts with her and chat and enjoy her Scottish accent and British sense of humor.

The purpose of my trip is complicated (no kidding) but in short, I am Tying Up Loose Ends, at least logistically, and thus untangling a bit of Nicole’s and my knotty domestic lives, even as we see how the threads will run together in future (to prolong a metaphor past its useful life).

Consequently, I am going to be touching and sorting the 99% of my worldly possessions that are in storage in Melbourne, and thus in transit I am traveling (or travelling, for  British readers) lightly, carrying only electronic items and their impressively long and thick cords, drugs (Valium and antidepressants), and tampons (there’s a reason there’s a brand called ‘Always’). Having so few items with me, I feel it important to keep everything charged up at all times, so I’m now alternating the alternating current source to my three best friends: Kindle, red HP, and Tracfone.

I bought the Kindle last January before my first long flight this year to England, and have subsequently used it only on long flights, so I don’t know it very well. I have only one book on it, David Foster Wallace’s INFINITE JEST, and in my fifth month of purchase I’m still only 8% of the way through it (note: this is not quite as feeble an effort as it sounds: the book in standard print is nearly 2000 pages).

Having a few hours to kill here in the mystery airport, I decided to see if I could access my email on my Kindle, and I found that yes, with only about 2 solid minutes of clicking, tapping, and smearing my finger across the tiny touch-screen, I could in fact get gmail up, albeit in a font best suited to small insects. Still I could read a message from Nic, having a wonderful time in Hobart, and I could write back — oh, wait, I could hit Reply and get a blank space to write back — but no, I couldn’t write. There was no keyboard , no matter how many times I tapped the touchscreen, mimicked the motion of typing letters on it, swore, or fiddled with the mysterioussettings or pressed promising-looking icons. I even turned the screen horizontal, hoping a keyboard would fall into place, but none appeared.

So I switched to my netbook to write back to Nic, but left my Kindle on to charge. It was at 92% when I put it down — plugged into the wall socket — and a minute later when I checked the storage again, it said 91%.  At that rate I’d be flat within an hour and a half, so I’ve stopped checking it and hope it will charge itself.

Meanwhile, the owners of a baby that has been crying through my entire trip have ascended the escalators into this area which I was starting to think of as my private study. Incredibly, this child and its misery have been my companions since we were seated in the waiting area at Tampa. Now, at least 1000 miles distant (clue #4!) and 7 hours later, I am still within hearing range of this baby, whose sobs are not just sad or angry like most babies’, but a kind of choking, wracking cry that makes me want to put it out of its misery.

It’s times like these — and they come often — that I am once again proud and glad not to have had children. I feel sorry for these parents, but I also wonder what they were thinking; they already have two other perfectly good children, trundling around them like moons, never straying far from the center of diaper bags, carry-on strollers, and parental authority and snacks — did they (the parents) really think a third one was a good idea? And if they did, couldn’t they keep it to themselves and not allow its wailing disjointed cries in the public world of airports, where there are stressed and under-resourced travel writers trying to calm and corral their own important charges?

I am going, as I said, to Melbourne, to sort out my life’s possessions. I will have 13 days and 14 nights there, to organize the storage, giving-away, sale, tossing-out, and shipping of a decade’s worth of personal items. I have completed only 1 of the 5 flights I will need to get there, and already I’m on the verge of infanticide. I’d better go get something to eat. Where the bloody hell am I?

The Things I’m Carrying

In late May, when I left New Jersey for 3 ½  months in Europe, I packed everything into two bags: one black, medium-sized, cylindrical bag on wheels, plus one red daypack.  The cylindrical bag can be expanded to the size of a large gym bag or folded down very small, with the use of extra zippers.  The total weight of all my gear was about 20 pounds.

My friends and my niece – who suggested I use plastic baggies to separate items in the bags — praised me for packing light and nodded appreciatively when I bragged that, after two weeks, once I’d given away a bunch of gifts in Macedonia, I’d be down to just a very small version of the black cylinder.

Two months later, I hadn’t reduced the size of the black bag at all. In fact it was more tightly packed than when I’d left, despite all I’d offloaded, because people had given me gifts, and I’d bought a few essentials as well.  As I was leaving Macedonia, here is what I was carrying:

Clothes

Tops: 1 long-sleeved cotton teeshirt, 1 zip hoodie, 2 short-sleeved cotton teeshirts (I’d only brought one, but I was given one from the Macedonian Pearl seminar, which practically gave me VIP status anywhere in Macedonia), 1 button-down cotton dress shirt (a gift from Leeanne after I admired it); 1 button-down quick-drying camping shirt.

Bottoms: 2 pairs of quick-drying camping pants, one full-length and one Capri-length; one pair lightweight hiking pants.

Dresswear: Black, below-knee-length TravelSmart dress (formerly my mother’s).

Smalls (in Baggies) : One short-sleeved wool undervest or “Spencer,” 2 sturdy, uncomfortable bras and 2 useless, comfortable ones; 7 pairs undies; 2 ½ pairs of white socks (the missing sock was lost from the best pair, a bamboo-fabric from Timberland, which I’d left in a private home in Macedonia where I washed my socks in the family sink; I kept hoping I’d find the lost sock, and so did not throw away the one odd one) plus one nonwhite pair (those, formerly white, had been accidentally grayed by my friend Chris in Macedonia, when we had access to a washing machine).

Shoes: 1 pair stained and exhausted Sketchers Shape-Ups, 1 pair black Crocs sandals.

Jewelry: 1 watch; 2 nearly identical bone pendants with suns on them, from Thailand (I thought I’d give one away but haven’t found the right person yet.)

Miscellaneous: 1 mold-stained bathing suit.

Toiletries

In black bag given to me by Nicole 12 years ago: Dr. Bronner’s peppermint soap in two forms (liquid and solid), toothbrush and paste, dental floss,  1 small pair nail scissors and 1 nail clipper; several hotel-room bottles of moisturizer; eye drops, Aspirin, Rx, tape for wrapping my knee. In plastic baggie: assorted tampons, eye drops, earplugs, eye mask.

 

Everything else

Music and art supplies: pages of music and lyrics for Roma and Macedonian folk songs and some American gospel and shape-note songs;  a bag of paints, brushes, and art erasers given to me by Walt, along with sheets of 100-weight painting paper and a few cardboard frames.

Reading and writing materials: One paperback, Reading Lolita in Terhan, which after 2 months I had read only 8 pages of; at least 15 pens, including one from Turtle Bay Resort, Hawaii; one from Scottsdale, AZ,  CVB, and one from the DisneyWorld Hilton (I am unable to leave pens behind and am never without at least a dozen of them);  1 small “steno”  notebook.

Electronics: 1 Acer Aspire netbook, 2 memory sticks; one Swiss-Army brand laptop “skin” to  protect the netbook from falling (but not, it turned out, from loss);  1 digital Linux camera in a pink case; extra memory card, cable to connect camera to computer; 1 large, heavy universal adaptor plug

Ceramics: 1 Macedonian angel figure (a gift from Vaska, my friend and the receptionist at Hotel Manister, chosen by her little girl); 2 mugs with spoons given to me by Gabi (the friend in the MAUS story).

Miscellany: Water bottle (with water); organic gourmet Vitamin-C lollipops, Vitamin C tablets, lysine, glucosamine; 2 small handwoven dishcloths, given to me by a nun at the monastery where I stayed; the smallest Swiss army pocketknife made; 1 WW 2-era brass Yugoslavian Army field oil & polish dispenser ; 1 recycled parachute-silk bag (maroon, very strong).

Rugs: 1 large, heavy handwoven wool runner, black and red, a gift from the nuns at Berovo, which took up 1/5^th of my bag and weighed as much as all my clothes put together (I was warned  not to ship anything I cared about by Macedonian post, so I had to carry it.)

That was all I was left with after I’d given away a lot of gifts from the USA, passed on several warm, bulky items of clothing to the nuns, and mailed a few things to England. Other than the rug and the ceramics – which were precious gifts – what could I have done without? Admittedly the lollipops were nonessential, but I’d been giving them out to kids in Macedonia and had only a few left. They are gourmet lollipops, and lightweight, so I didn’t chuck them out. As for the Yugoslavian oil dispenser, you never know when you’re going to need one of those to clean a rifle.

But it was too much. I hated having to carry those two bags every time I moved. I have dragged it resentfully through two continents and 7 countries, and in that time I’ve thought carefully about how to lighten the burden. Now, near the end of my journey, I’ve figured out how to travel really lightly, so from now, on all future journeys,  I  will be able to use only one small daypack. Here is the secret, which I offer for any of my friends or readers to use or share with any of our fellow and sister travellers. In future, I won’t bring any clothes.

KEYS UNHIDE. FRIENDS THANK.

(Note: The following post will be a whole lot more interesting to people who have read the post immediately preceding it. To view that post, click on the title, “Keys Lose; Family Get.” , which should appear  just above and to the left of this text.)

In the middle of this morning, I went out to the garden, where I noticed that the small silver-ribbon-wrapped teddy bear had moved in the night. He (she? it’s hard to tell) had moved from where I’d left him, with his little head sticking out above a flower pot as in an Anne Geddes portrait, to a more comfortable position where he could rest his back. I remembered Carol’s advice to ask him about the pixies…

Also I remembered Lyn’s advice to look near the arch. I also remembered Siobahn’s interest in  the parsley I bought at the car-boot sale. I ignored all of the advice, but I did move the car-boot parsely out of the greenhouse into the open air, so it could get some rain. This move necessitated the re-arrangement of several other pots, so that the newcomer could also get a share of any sunlight that might ever fall on this part of England. This is what I was moving around, as seen from eye level:

Pots seen from human level

As I reached for one of the small pots, I saw it like this:

Pots at pixie level

And then, I saw this:

Pot at teddy-bear level

I can’t think how the keys got underneath that pot! I have not touched it in at least 5 or six days, yet the keys disappeared only the day before yesterday. I didn’t go anywhere near those pots when I put the parsely out…at least, as far as I can remember. I think the only rational explanation is that the cats, pixies, and teddy bear worked together, for the fun of watching me play hide-and-seek (mostly seek) for 36 hours.

I would like to thank the friends and relatives on three continents who contributed support, psychic intuition, and common sense during this difficult time. I am especially grateful to the silver-wrapped teddy bear, who wishes to remain anonymous. May she guide your future searches.

Keys Lose; Family Get

Note: I’ve changed names of family members here, because not everyone likes to have his/her information on the Internet.

To use the phrase that Garrison Keillor has been opening his monologues with for the past 30 years, It’s been a quiet week  — in Coventry. This fortnight of house-sitting for my brother and his girlfriend (ahem!) had always been planned as a quiet time, a break after the relentless adventure of my summer in Macedonia, Hungary, and Turkey.

The week before arriving in Coventry I spent in London, a city so ready for the Olympics that it is crouched on the starting line, waiting for the shot. I sprint-limped through West Hampstead and Covent Garden and the West End; I went to a family party the home of my aunt and her partner, where I met heaps of near-relatives and played giant-pick-up-sticks with them and took photos of men with their shirts off, playing badminton in the freezing cold midsummer afternoon, in between rain showers;  I ate Thai food with my urbane and nervewrackingly witty cousins at an old, Tudor-I-think place named the best pub  in London (2004); I stayed at Fluffy Towers, April’s  three-storeyed London version  of Uncle Bill’s house on the hill in Switzerland – always open to waifs and strays; I saw Billy Eliot on the same day I took the Tube back to Heathrow to track down my lost laptop; my darling cousin April took me to The Eye for the ride of my life, and I who claim not to be impressed by views was elated and delighted; we walked past the Houses of Parliament under the full moon and  found a gorgeous yet groovy old pub no doubt well known to London’s Hansard reporters; we laughed a lot, and at the end of the week I was very happy and very tired.

Coventry then was to be a sedate and settled time, time to do a lot of hotel reviews and a few CURVE and PERCEPTIVE TRAVEL assignments and catch up on blogging and sleep and wash my clothes and rest my knee. It’s been great – I’ve written most of every day, and I’ve earned money and sold article ideas and met deadlines and earned the trust of  two large, fluffy, hard-to-get-to-know cats, Polly (left) and Dylan (below).

I’ve made jam (well, syrup) from a recipe demonstrated by my brother, with damsons grown in the backyard. I’ve eaten my own weight in blackberries and brushed away my own weight in cat hairs. I’ve saved spiders from the cats and thrown away the carcass of a dead bird that I was too late to save.

A few days ago, as I was tidying up the garden, I remembered a dream from a few months ago  about “finding a home,” in which I was given to understand that my true home was in England, in an old house, and it had many blackberries and spiders around it. I looked back at the house – it’s not that old. But it still felt like home, at least for a little while.

Two days before they left, Rose (my brother’s girlfriend, ahem) was looking at a list of what to pack, and she mentioned something about putting the papers into the cases. I glanced at the list and saw that it said “divorce papers.” Oh, I said, were they taking those just in case there was any trouble at immigration?

“No,” she said, engagingly.  And then I knew that she and my brother were getting married; or at least, as she cautioned me to think of it, they planned to if everything went well…

Nothing could have made me happier, and I told her so. I’ve never seen my older brother so relaxed and comfortable than he has seemed here with Rose in Coventry.  He’s quit smoking and cut down on his drinking and lost weight – he seems 20 years younger and many degrees more healthy than when he met her, around 2003.

The plan was for the two to get married in the USA, with my parents and Michael’s kids in attendance – none of them knew about the wedding but all had been requested to show up by  4 pm on the chosen day, for an evening, outdoor ceremony.  I was sorry not to be able to go, but Rose assured me that my taking care of the cats made it possible for them to leave the house and relax about their animals, and I know how important such reassurance  is to a good vacation (let alone marriage).

I was happy to get this image (from a phone camera) a few days ago:

The same day, Neil, Rose’s son, sent me a FB friend request, saying “Aunt get!”  After a few moments of pondering, I caught on: it was cool-young-person’s game-speak for “Receive new auntie.” I was pleased to be so initiated and welcomed to the family.

In the past 16 days  I’ve  left the house only  four  times:  thrice visiting Sainsbury’s Superstore ,  twice the local car-boot sale, and once the hospital walk-in clinic. I’ve been resting my knee and my feet and have seen some improvement in all three; I’ve also been gaining weight from eating tea and biscuits as I write, but you can’t have everything in a staycation in Eastern Green.

Yesterday, after my biggest outing so far I arrived “home” feeling cheerful and glad to get in from the usual rain. I’d taken three buses to get back from the Sainsbury’s, thus saving myself a £5 taxi fare and a long walk, and I had bought interesting things at the car-boot sale and nice food for the week ahead.

I came in, dropped my bags on one of the couches in the living room, and said hello to a cat that wanted to go out. I let her out, took some food into the kitchen and put it away, unwrapped my car-boot booty, put a little pot of parsley in the back garden, did some dishes, let a cat in and/or out through the kitchen door, and topped up the cats’ food bowls. I also put the telly on for 10 minutes to see if New York was still on the map, ate some lunch (Sainsbury’s take-away  salad and pasta, very nice too) and checked my email. At some point  I went upstairs, put away my daypack, moved a cat and stripped the sheets off Michael and Rose’s bed, did a load of laundry, and so on and so forth and up and down and back and fro and somewhere in that time, I lost Michael’s keys.

I realized that they were gone about 4 pm, and spent the next 4 and ½ hours looking for them. I looked not only on all the logical places but also all the illogical ones, such as in drawers I’d never opened and in appliances I’ve never used. I picked through the garbage and recycling bins. I checked the pockets of all my clothes – not just the ones I was wearing that day – many times. I emptied out my daypack and shook it upside down. I searched the cats’ cupboard, the cats, the couches, the kitchen, utility room, bathroom, and study. I looked on top of things I can’t reach the top of and lay on the floor to peer under heavy furniture.

This keyring is big – when I am carrying it (or as I should say, when I used to carry it) it would weigh down the pocket of my jacket or make my pants sag to one side. It had about 10 keys on it, including 2 old-fashioned big ones, as well as a No. 1 Dad fob that one of Michael’s kids had no doubt  given him 20-odd years ago and which he had treasured ever since.  It is not easy to lose such a large, shiny, significant and heavy collection, yet I’d done it without even thinking about it. (I am starting to think that my losing things is a kind of disease – just two weeks ago I lost my laptop. Less than a year ago my two silver rings from Nicole. And now this.)

Although I wouldn’t be able to replace the keyring, I reasoned, at least I can get replacements made for the keys. This is not an irrevocable error, just an expensive one.  And if the keys can’t be replaced – for example, if I had the only copy of the key to the gate padlock – the locks can be replaced. There is no limit to the number of things I might need to replace as a result of this loss (if not locks, then doors and windows…perhaps foundations or retaining walls, too). I  am prepared to do so, especially since I know that moments after I’ve reproduced every single missing key, the originals will turn up, either in the pocket of the pants I was wearing yesterday, or on the front doorstep.

I beseeched friends on Facebook to use their psychic (or non-psychic) abilities, and Neil, Rose’s son, saw my post and rang me and we had a long, amusing chat about the nature of loss (or material objects) and their likely hiding places. He offered, “If tomorrow comes and if you want to go out and if you want a spare set of keys, let me know and I’ll bring them round to you.” I asked him if those were three separate dependent clauses – that is, was the first one the question of whether or not the next day would come?  We digressed into  our practical need for time machines, whether or not tomorrow would come, or if we might be caught in an endless Groundhog-Day loop of my looking for the keys and asking him for help and then looking for the keys some more and asking him for help…”in which case,” he concluded, “you and I will have this conversation over and over and over…”

This morning (which did come), I continued my efforts. In the past two days I’ve tidied up this house more than it’s been tidied since the owners left. I stripped two beds, flipped the mattress in the room I’m sleeping in, emptied the dryer and the dishwasher (which I never use) and cleaned out the fridge. I’ve straightened everyone’s papers and books and put away half a dozen cups and glasses. I shaken out rugs that I washed last week. I’ve nearly done my back kneeling down and peering under and lifting heavy furniture.

About midday, there was a knock on the (main) front door. I couldn’t open it, but I opened the door to the utility room to see Neil, proffering spare keys. He said he was in the neighbourhood on an errand and thought I might want to go out, and he offered his eyes.

Being a computer game designer, he is a professional problem-solver and no slouch at logical thinking, and I was grateful for his help. He looked everywhere he could think of, including places I had not considered such as the (empty) magazine rack by the couch and in the Harry-Potter cupboard under the stairs, which I did not know existed. He helped me flip the mattress , and he investigated drawers and cupboards that I had never seen, let alone touched.

Neil thinks that Dylan, the male cat, has found the keys on the floor and playfully dragged them somewhere out of sight. (That’ll teach me to call him ‘Silly Dylan’!) As evidence, Neil has pointed out that he has witnessed Dylan dragging a large rug across the living room before – he’s a strong and enterprising cat. I think a magpie or a crow has taken the nice shiny keys from the back garden.  As evidence, I mentioned hearing a crow crow loudly yesterday afternoon.  I don’t think either of us is convinced by the other’s theory.  Hell, I’m not convinced by my theory.

The good part, though, was that after Neil left, I found myself saying under my breath not, “They have to be SOMEWHERE,” as has been my mantra for the past 20 hours, but “What a sweetie.”  How good of him it was to not only offer to bring me spare keys if I needed them and asked him to, but to actually pop by with them, and not only offer to help me look but actually do it, convincingly and conclusively. When the physical search was over, he gamely tried to help me deduce where the lost keys might be. Best of all, he wasn’t a bit critical of me and in fact assured me that he and his family lose things all the time – his father had rung him just that morning saying he’d lost his wallet. Neil appeared most concerned that “These things happen in threes,” and that the next mishap might be his.

He treated the whole sorry incident like an intriguing puzzle rather than a failure of my common sense, and he was a good sport about trying to help me win. He took time out of his bank holiday, and he helped me turn a mattress and otherwise tear the house apart looking for something I’d lost – and he gave me his spare keys.

I was pretty embarrassed about the whole thing, and knew he must think I’m really flakey – which I am. I felt that this brilliant young man, whom I’ve only just met a week ago and to whom I am now officially related – he’s  my step-nephew! – would realize that his new step-aunt is not much of a gain for the family. I just hated looking so dopey.  It didn’t help at all that while Neil was here, I misplaced the OTHER key to one of the back doors (that one, though, turned up in my pocket after only 10 minutes of being gone).

I was so grateful for Neil’s support and generous spirit, and because of it,  I  realized that I didn’t have to be embarrassed about being dumb and disorganized. It’s okay for me to be dumb and disorganized. I’d been worried that Michael and Rose would be sorry that they’d let me housesit (I’ve also burnt a pot, broken a mug, and temporarily mislaid a cat in the time I’ve been here), and that next time they wanted to go on holiday they’d go back to paying someone a large amount to come in and feed the pets twice a day.

But I don’t think they will, now that I’ve spoken to Neil about the catastrophe. He was so understanding, and I think maybe Rose & Michael will be, too.  They’ve just had an opportunity to see something about me that I would have preferred to keep hidden (actual a whole complex of things, including my utter ineptitude with keys, my poor memory, my lack of organizational skills, my tendency to lose stuff), but they’re not going to kick me out of their lives or reject me because of it. I guess, like a lot of people, I try to hide parts of myself, but it’s a great relief, after accidental exposure, not to be rejected.  I must be part of a family.

The Essential Evil of Istanbul

For some reason, and very uncharacteristically, I was nervous about going to Istanbul. I don’t know why – maybe I’d gotten used to being cosseted at the Ada Hotel in Bodrum (http://www.kiwicollection.com/hotel-detail/ada-hotel).  For the previous ten days, I’d been staying at five-star hotels as a guest of the marketing departments, and my temporary VIP status had meant that I never even had to think about my needs, let alone fulfil them.

But I was going to Istanbul as a regular tourist, not as a known travel writer. I would have to not only pay for things like hotels and meals but also arrange them. Although the chivalrous driver from the Ada Hotel dropped me off at the Bodrum airport and man-handled my luggage to the last possible point, I worried about how I’d get to my next hotel from the Istanbul airport (which was named Ataturk, a word which made me think of Attila the Hun saying, “Attaboy!” to early jihadists). No one would be meeting my flight (horrors!), and I’d read alarming reports of taxi drivers at Ataturk Airport –muggings and kidnappings were not unheard of, and obscene overcharging was standard practice.

Earlier in the week, I’d wasted four hours trying to book accommodation through a hopeless site that promised to include an airport pick-up with any reservation, but I hadn’t been able to make a booking for love nor money nor via phone calls from the indignant and determined manager of the Ada. She, a tourism expert of about 26 years and a wiry, low-voiced Amazon who summoned drivers, bellmen, and minor heads of state with a terse nod, had spoken to the hapless Russians who occasionally answered the phone at the booking service as if they had deliberately ruined tourism in Turkey. Even though I couldn’t tell what she was saying, I was scared by her tone.

Despite her efforts, though – speeches and demands that certainly would have galvanized me into any form of action had I been on the receiving end of her phone calls — the Russian guides to Istanbul refused to book anything. When I tried to reserve a room/ride online, I’d get no results at all. And when the Ada manager, on my behalf, rang the offices (which were answered by a young girl saying, “Hello” in Turkish with a Russian accent) we’d get vague promises about call-backs and advice to try again online later.

So, less than 24 hours before I would actually need the place to sleep, I’d booked the lovely-looking Park City Hotel on the recommendation of Neriman (senior manager of the Ada, who took me around Bodrum and became my best friend for the week). My El-Cheapo Airlines flight to Istanbul was due to arrive very late, and I didn’t know how I’d get to Park City. I worried that I’d miss the last Havos bus and would be subject to the greedy whims of a ruthless cabbie who’d lock my bags in the trunk and then pretend not to be able to find the Park City Hotel, even though it was in Taksim Square, essentially the middle of the world, according to the hotel’s website.

It didn’t help that my flight was delayed – and it was the ONLY one to be late out of Bodrum that night. Sitting at the gate, I worried that the delay was due to mechanical problems which would result, in the plane’s next flight, in a dreadful crash in which all passengers and crew were tragically lost. Maybe I was tired. Probably I was very tired, from 10 days of sight-seeing and fine dining. But whatever the reason, I still felt nervous about arriving at midnight in a large, unknown city, with only 25 Turkish lire and non-functioning American credit card to get me where I was to sleep.

After landing at Ataturk, however, I did make it onto the correct Havos bus. It, the last bus, departed at midnight, and I had an hour and a half ride to worry, before arriving in the famous Taksim Square, about how I’d get from the bus stop in the square to my hotel, wherever it was. Ece said it was only a ten-minute walk from the bus stop to my hotel, and she’d kindly drawn me a small, crude map, but she hadn’t taken into consideration the fact that I would have a) a painful and inflamed knee and b) heavy and awkward luggage and c) the innate Kendall sense of direction.

As we reached the huge outskirts of the city, initially I was not impressed. In the dark, the tallish buildings and blank streets could have been the edges of Trenton or San Jose. But then we passed a street sign saying WELCOME TO EUROPE, and I felt better. I’d never thought that I’d drive across a border between continents.

However, being in Europe didn’t mean that suddenly the bus was full of charming fluent-English speakers eager to welcome a visitor. I’d asked two or three people sitting near me for assistance, and all had said (in perfectly inflected English) that they did not speak English, sorry. Well, I was sorry, and as we reached the bus stop I was even sorrier for myself as it became clear that Taksim Square was like a combination of Times Square, the Cretan Labyrinth, and Dubai Airport.

One of the last to leave the clean, well-lighted bus, I asked a blonde woman reaching for her luggage if she spoke English. No, she was sorry; she didn’t. On the curb, I tried to attract the attention of the bus driver, but he was engaged in unloading luggage and anyway, I knew already that he didn’t speak English; he was sorry. In a few moments I was going to be immobile and lost with my dreadful black bag with malfunctioning wheels, my overstuffed red daypack, and my nearly illegible map. A horde of taxis glinted ominously under the yellow streetlight, and inside them, American-hating thieves stroked their hairy beards and rubbed their nicotine-stained hands, calculating my net worth.

As my non-English-speaking bus-mates wheeled their functional suitcases away from the bus, or hailed taxis in no-nonsense Turkish, I looked around for help. Walking towards me were about 25 people, most of them young and well dressed, obviously out for dinner and drinks and dancing and tourist-baiting. I stopped a couple walking towards me and pathetically asked if they spoke English.

The man shook his head, saying, “No, sorry,” and the woman said, “Sorry, no, but yes! Put!” She turned and ran back in the direction she’d come, shouting something. She was calling a name, and in between shouts she told me “My friend, he speak English. He can help.” We trotted along for a block or so, her skipping in her high heels, her escort gliding alongside, and me, hobbling under my heavy daypack and lugging the dreadful round gym-bag-on-bad-wheels, trying to keep up.

“He,” the friend, was a swish-looking, very pretty young woman in a short dress and big earrings, with long dangling curls and a cute boyfriend, who was just disappearing up the top of a flight of stairs that led to another street. She swung around, smiling, when she heard her friend calling, and almost danced back down the steps, greeting her friends to whom she’d just said goodbye. I had the impression that she didn’t want the party to be over and was glad of an excuse not to go home.

She assured me that she spoke English and was happy to help me. “We want to stay out,” she said of herself and her friend, “But the boys won’t take us!” It was about 1 a.m. by then and I imagined that the boys were ready for bed, for one reason or another, but she sounded as if she’d been locked up in a cell all evening with nothing but bread and water and FoxTel.

I explained that I needed someone to point me towards the street of the Park City hotel, and showed her the address. She shared the information with her boyfriend, her girlfriend, and the girlfriend’s boyfriend, and they all spoke excitedly in Turkish for some time. They all pointed in the same direction, and I said, “Great, thank you so much,” and headed towards what I hoped was the right intersection, but I was not allowed to go. For one thing, there was a steady onslaught of cars, buses, and taxis streaming across the street in my way, and for another thing the pretty girl took my arm and told me, “Just put.” As if we’d just met at a party, she told me that she was not from Istanbul, but was Spanish, and that her two friends were also not from Istanbul, but were visiting from another part of Turkey.

“Hablo un pocito de Espanol,” (I speak a little bit Spanish) I said, glad to indicate that I was not entirely monolingual, and she seemed delighted. We chatted about Spain or something, and it began to seem as if we should all go out for a drink together. Meanwhile, the original girl’s boyfriend was using his phone, calling another friend. (Was it a bloke for me?) The curly-haired girl said he was calling a taxi driver friend for directions to the hotel, for which I was grateful.

A few seconds after that, a black taxi stopped in front of us, and the driver got out and embraced the man who’d been on the phone. The phone-man handed him a ten-lire note, and all of my new friends urged me to get into the taxi. One of the men put my bags in the back seat. “But what will it cost?” I asked, remembering what I’d read about the essentially evil nature of Istanbul’s taxi drivers.

“No cost!” my new friend said. “My friend’s husband has taken care!” She wagged a finger towards the driver, now back in his seat, and said, “We will call the hotel in a few minutes to make sure you arrive and there is no problems. Goodbye! Welcome to Istanbul!”  We all kissed each other on both cheeks, as befitted our new closeness, and I waved goodbye to the gang as my taxi driver drove me the block and a half to Park City Hotel.

Shrewd Bargaining in Cappadocia

This morning I was woken in my cave-room (the Old Treasury) for the second day in a row by the system I’d requested here at Sacred House (just look at this place – I don’t yet have the wherewithal/time to describe it — http://www.sacred-house.com/ is the link to the hotel, and a short video is available — just ask and I’ll email it to you, as I can’t yet work out how to post it here.)

In this place, Sacred House, amongst other blessings, there are no phones or clocks in the rooms. At 8 a.m. the staffperson on duty knocked on my door until I shouted “Hello!” from my (gargantuan, and far-away-from-the-door) bed. Ten minutes later, he returned with a glass (not a cup) of strong black tea and a (real) silver sugar bowl (with real sugar in it). This arrangement is infinitely superior to my usual system of hitting the snooze button every ten minutes for an hour and a half, trying to bribe myself to get up with promises of making myself something to eat.

In the interim, between the first and second wake-up knock, I got dressed and searched for some tip money for my dear wake-up-person, whose face I had not yet seen. I opened my wallet and found about 6 bills. One was for 20,000, one was for 5,000, and four were for 50. Well, I didn’t feel I could give anything as small as 50, but neither could I afford to give 5000 Turkish lire. I had not yet learnt the conversion rate, but I thought about 200 would be a decent tip for tea and wake-up. Not having a 200-lire note, I decided to give the guy 3 of my four small pink bills, which were for 50 each. I hesitated, because I didn’t want to insult him by giving him the equivalent of 3 quarters. On the other hand, a small tip is better than no tip at all. And that way I’d still have one 50 note in case I needed to use the loo or something on my day’s tour of Cappadocia.

And I felt sure that I was right about a small tip being better than none when I handed the man who brought my tea the 3 bills. He looked surprised – maybe because I neglected to tip yesterday morning – and said thank you in two languages, making me glad I’d bothered to give him even that paltry amount.

About my tour of Cappadocia I can’t even begin to write yet – I need a whole new vocabulary and syntax, plus a more time – but I did buy a bunch of postcards to show some friends and family some of the amazing scenery. I also took about 400 photos — here’s just one:

The postcards (which, my guide assured me, I was buying from the very best place) were 10 for “1,5” according to the sign. I didn’t know if that meant 1,500 of something or 1.5 of something  or something else, so I handed over one of my large notes, apologetically, feeling bad because I’d be surely getting all the post-card-seller’s change. He shook his head sadly, and I took the note back and looked for something smaller.

“Is not Turkish,” my guide said, looking over my shoulder. He examined the big note and gave me to understand that I had tried to pay for my postcards of Cappadocia with Hungarian florins.  Oh, I thought. I hadn’t realized that I still had any Hungarian notes.

“That is Turkish,” the guide said, pointing to my one small pink note.

“But it’s not enough,” I said, wondering if I could use my Visa card to buy postcards.

“It’s enough to buy many,” my guide corrected me. I handed over the money and received a lot of notes and some coins: 48.5 lire. “Can buy 1000 postcards,” the guide murmured. I didn’t want 1000 postcards, and I wondered if I’d have enough to buy a lemonade. Turned out I did – a lemonade was only 2 lire. I still had 46.5 left…

…but that was the end of my Turkish money, because I’d given away 150 lire to the tea-man. This seemed regrettable, but I had no idea how much money I’d actually paid in that tip, and anyway we were moving on to another fascinating stop.

After my tour guide departed, the driver took me, at my request I think, to a carpet and handicrafts co-op. Anyone who knows me (or knows my mother or knew her mother) knows that I love rugs, so my visit to this co-op was not entirely for research purposes. I had decided that if I saw a rug I loved, I would invest some of my savings into it, with the idea that someday in future I would again have a) a job, to replenish said savings and b) a place to lay the rug.

Thecarpet factory was the nicest co-op I’ve seen (not that I’ve seen many, but I visited a few in Bali and maybe Thailand). It was in the middle of a long, one-storey, new building, and it comprised many well lit rooms with an healthy cubic-metre of-breathable-air-to-human-being ratio. In each of the front rooms, two or three master weavers / teachers were working at looms, with plenty of light and room (and plenty of rights and looms, too) and, I was assured by the salesman, frequent breaks. These women are the experts who not only weave the best carpets in, apparently, you know, the factory, the city, the area, the country, and the whole world, but also they are teachers of the women of their own home villages, training the stay-at-home workers (all women) how to make carpets for sale, creating cottage industries that allow thousands of women to support their families.

The whole place seemed legitimate, and the employees unoppressed (apart from the fact that they apparently are required to wear bright pink shirts), and my tour guide had mentioned to me that it was government-supported enterprise, designed to pay fair wages to local women to prevent families from having to leave the area – and, oh yes, to make sure the carpet-weaving skills were handed down to the next generations. Income production for the government was, I was given to understand, a secondary consideration to ethical living standards for the poor people of Cappadocia and humane, sustainable forms of development.

I watched the women working for quite a while and took photos. One of them slowed down so I could get a photo of her hands doing one of the 10,000,000,000,000,000 knots in her current project. She was holding a sharp knife in one hand with which she cut off the thread after each knot. This seemed inefficient to me but my opinion has not been requested in the last few thousand years of carpet making in this region, and the result of her cutting was a lovely bowl of silk threads under her loom.

The English-speaking carpet salesman walked me through the workshop and the dyeing area, talking continuously about the history of the weaves and the dyes and the women and the designs and the area. He didn’t really like me taking photos but he allowed me to when I explained that I was a journalist – a handy glorified term for “freelance and thus impoverished travel writer” on assignment for a US magazine. He asked me if it was Architectural Digest and I had to admit it was not. The one I was working for is not so widely known in Turkey as the one that had awarded his carpet company the “carpet of the year” design award.

By the third or fourth or fifth roomful of rugs and auditory information I was ready to hear some prices, at which moment, conveniently, we happened to be entering the very showroom where the display carpets were kept. What timing! Of course there was no obligation to buy and could he offer me some Turkish hospitality?

He could. It was about 42 C. outside and I’d been scrabbling around cliff faces and in caves. I asked for water rather than coffee or tea, and in seconds I was offered a chilled bottle and a glass, on a (real) silver tray, by a woman dressed in some kind of costume  I couldn’t even really see, let alone classify.

She left and the two young men in the showroom began to haul out carpets and kilims in a practiced order. First I was shown the crudest and simplest of pieces, a nice small widely woven kilim in yellow and red. And then I quickly was shown better, more dense examples of similar techniques. The whole time, the salesman – who was wearing a bright pink shirt that made him stand out from the rugs – kept hammering the essential points that were vital to my appreciation of Turkish carpentry –  matters about single and double knots, about how long it would take “one lady” to make each rug, about the quality of the materials, the nature of the dyes used, and the origin of the design. He knew all those details and more about every single rug in the showroom and beyond – he’d been selling rugs there for 26 years.

I liked him and found his patter informative, but I had to laugh when he motioned one of the young men not to unfurl the carpet until the exact moment when he cued him. Although I don’t understand Turkish, it was clear that he was admonishing the young man for starting to show me the carpet before I had been properly advised as to its fine qualities and unique design features. I laughed, the boy holding the rug laughed, and the salesman laughed.

The technique was simple (for me, the buyer) and less individualized than that in the Chinese shop where I bought my last significant rugs. The salesman simply produced more and more carpets of better and better quality and higher and higher price, starting with the kilim for $150 US and going up to those that cost as much as my most expensive car, and then further.

Naturally the system worked. Not for nothing had my new friend been selling carpets for 26 years, and not for a penny under what the customer was prepared to spend, either. He knew my limit, I think, because I’d asked him earlier if he had anything in the $500 range, expecting a “no.” I was literally dizzy after half an hour of seeing carpets unrolled – and sometimes  FLIPPED from end to end in midair, to show me the different nap in different lights, which produced astonishing differences in color. Every time one of the young men flipped a carpet like that, I’d laugh and sometimes applaud at their skill. It made a carpet that seemed white turn green; it changed a background from indigo to rose. I don’t know how they did it, but it was fast, like sleight of hand

I was not just overwhelmed and tired but physically dizzy as if I’d been on a roller coaster. I think it was the heat and the dehydration; I felt ill and all I was doing was sitting down and looking. Feeling sympathetic for the young men doing all the work, I asked the salesman to stop, because I didn’t want to exhaust the poor boys for nothing. He said okay, then showed me two dozen more of the great carpets, including one silk number for $240,000, which he assured me he was having shown to me for my “eyes’ pleasure only.” He could say that again.

He then said that they would start rolling up the carpets again and putting them away, but if there was any one I wanted to ask the price of, I could do so.

I am pretty sure that he knew which ones I wanted, because they were not rolled up as fast as the others. Or maybe I wanted almost all of them, but he left out the ones in my range. The one I thought might be possible, and the colors of which appealed (dark red and dark blue), was a local design from Cappadocia — the very place I’d just been visiting!! and it signified world harmony, in that it had mosques and houses next to each other (neither one bombed out or graffitti-scarred) around the border.  This excellent piece was, he calculated, flourishing a calculator — $687.50 US, rounded down to $680. That included my 13% discount for using Visa or Mastercard, and shipping. To the USA.

Shrewd and experienced bargainer that I am, I walked away. Or, actually, I crawled away. Between wanting to accept the salesman’s invitation to touch and see the carpets close up, and not wanting to put the bottom of my shoe on the new carpets, and what with being dizzy and very hot and very covetous of these carpets, I’d been virtually sprawled atop the piles of carpets, moving on hands and knees rather than put  sneaker on them, and eventually pretty much just lolling on top of the best silk ones, petting them in ecstasy. But when he said $650 was the final price, I sat up, shrugged dramatically and said it was just too high. I crawled back to my water glass, drank from it, and tried to look resigned.

Well. Madam. He could not possibly offer me a lower price. Not for such a fine carpet as the one I’d chosen.

Well. Sir.  He should know that I was not a rich American. I was a writer, working my way around his country.

He laughed softly. “At which motel are you staying?” he asked.

This was a bad turn. I am staying at the best hotel in the most exclusive town in Cappadocia, the Sacred House. I don’t even know what the room rate, is but I’m guessing it’s at least a couple of silk runners per night. I am sure that most of the visitors who come to the co-op from the Sacred House do not ask for deep discounts.

“I’m a guest of the manager,” I said, wondering if his English would allow him to appreciate the nuance of the word “guest” that meant, “non-paying.” In case it was not, I added, “I am a travel writer, and I am writing about the place. They have me stay there so I can write about  it.” And then Allah intervened and sent me an idea. “If you give me a carpet I will write about your co-op, too.”

Technically of course I don’t yet have an assignment to write a feature about the carpet co-op, but who was I to interfere with divine inspiration? The carpet dealer laughed but he seemed interested in the possibilities for promotion. Or maybe he was just pulling the usual car/pet-salesperson stunt, but he went off to consult a higher authority, leaving me with the two boys still rolling up rugs. They understood enough English that they were laughing at my suggestion, but in a nice way. I felt they were on my side since I’d made everyone laugh at the salesman’s dramatic techniques.

The higher authority turned out to be the manager or director or something of the carpet co-op, a stately and patriarchal looking man with a big belly, a gray furry head, and Sultan-like stature. When he walked in to meet me, one of the boys happened to be holding up a rug similar to the one I really wanted, and not realizing it was not my rug, we all three negotiated the deal while looking at that one.

The salesman told the Sultan, in English, as if for the first time, that he’d offered me the rug for $650. “Will you tell him your final price?” the salesman asked me, with the flair of an actor handing over a scene.

“Five hundred,” I said. I was sure there’d be a counter offer, perhaps $600, and I’d take it, but to my surprise the manager said yes. I said “Hum-del-Allah!” the way I learnt in Egypt, and he gave me a big smile and a polite one-armed hug and we were all delighted, especially me since I’d been prepared to pay even more than I was paying.

I signed the back of the rug (so they can’t swap it for an inferior one in the shipping), signed away my first-born child and rights to all future publications, and I was done. The rug should arrive at my parents’ house in matter of weeks.

On the way back to the hotel, I calculated the total cost of the rug – it was $500 plus whatever sum I’d given away as a tip that morning. I decided that I was not going to ask for the tip-money back; it was my own stupid fault for being too lazy to work out the exchange rate. I’d given the tea-man all my money for my time in Turkey, so I’d just have to economize later. No food for a few weeks should help me lose weight anyway.

Later, back in the cool sanctuary of Sacred House, I was greeted by the lovely manager, Ecce, who introduced me to her husband, the man who has designed this incredible hotel, and I showed them the photo of my new rug. I asked their opinions about the price and was relieved when they put it at $1000 or $900 US.  Ecce’s husband, Turan, mentioned that he knew the design — it is local, Cappadocian — and I mentioned to him that it symbolized global harmony, with churches and mosques next to each other — kind of like his idea for Sacred House hotel, which doesn’t glorify any one religion but showcases the most beautiful aspects of many faiths and religious art forms.

I then remembered my question about money then. “Can you tell me about the exchange rate?” I said. “I think I made a mistake earlier.”

Ecce laughed a little.  “I think I know what you mean,” she said. “I meant to speak to you about that later.” She has a soft voice and a lovely gracious nature – daughter of a diplomat, raised in Russia and Switzerland and Germany – and she somehow did not add to  my embarrassment or shame as she explained that when the tea-man had given the money in this morning (as the staff do with all tips) she had thought maybe I’d been confused, as I’d tipped him US $135.00.

“What did you mean to give him?” she asked, and I said I’d wanted to give a nice tip, maybe $10. She very kindly said she’d talk to me later and that such confusion happened often – I’m sure in truth I’m the only person to make such a stupid mistake, but she was amazingly gracious.

Ten minutes later, as I was back in my cool cave, another staff member knocked on my door and handed me a stack of bills – about 135 lire. I now can buy food for the rest of my time in Turkey. Shrewd bargainer that I am, I’m doomed not to lose any weight here…but I do have a lovely carpet to remind me of the importance of conversion rates and the hospitality, generosity, and graciousness of the managers and staff of Sacred House…and, you know, the factory, the city, the area, the country, and the whole world.

Sweaty Panic, part 2

Note: This entry will be more meaningful and interesting to those who have read the previous entry, “Sweaty Panic in Istanbul.” If you can see the double arrow pointing to the left, near the title of this entry, you can click it and read the previous post. Two for the price of one!

 

When one of the men working and talking behind counter J made eye contact with me and nodded, he was on the phone. The couple with their own problems was still there, and other men were milling in and out, all talking to the phone-man, who was about 40, in a white shirt, and who seemed to be a supervisor. “I have missed my flight!” I said. He was still engaged in conversation on the phone but he did look at me with mild interest. Keeping the English simple, I said, “Help!”

He put the phone down briefly and asked where I’d come from that day.

“Budapest,” I said.

“Was it late?” he said.

“No,” I admitted. “It wasn’t a bit late. I forgot about the time change.” I showed him my watch, which said 5.10 pm, the correct time in Budapest. Although Budapest was on another continent, it had been only about a two-hour flight away, fooling this savvy traveler into thinking she was still in the same time zone.

“It is your fault,” he said.

“Yes, absolutely my fault,” I agreed. “Completely. Is there another flight?”

He told me I had to go first to the ticket office – he gestured far away from him, back on the other side of the security barrier I had just breached – and then go to collect my baggage and then check in for the next flight, if there was one that night. This sequence of actions, I knew, would be impossible for me. It had taken me fifteen minutes to establish with the proper authorities that I’d missed my flight; the idea of repositioning and reconfiguring my luggage and myself onto another one was beyond me. “Can you help me?” I begged.

Clearly, he could see that I was incapable of managing my own crisis. “Errol!” he shouted into the phone, at me, and towards a crowd of blue-uniformed people milling outside the roped area.  No one moved, so he repeated, louder each time, “Errol! Errol! ERROL!” When hapless Errol finally heard and came to the booth, the supervisor spoke to him in Turkish, explaining that I was an imbecile who needed to be taken out of his sight, or else I would stay whining at booth J for the rest of my life. He pointed far, far away.

The supervisor came out from behind the desk in order to nudge me out of the red-roped area, like a Border Collie herding a particularly stupid, recalcitrant sheep. When I was nearly out of reach, he looked sternly down his long furry nose and said, “It is your fault.” Behind this brief assertion spoken in English, in his eyes there were several invisible small-print paragraphs in Turkish, explaining that in the case of a passenger missing a flight due to his/her own negligence, he/she would forfeit 100% of the paid airfare plus taxes and fees; and any further travel would necessitate the purchase a new ticket prior to the time of departure. Correspondence would not be entered into.

The figure “350 Euros” jumped into my mind, because I’d been checking last-minute airfares the day before and had seen how high they were. I’d have to not buy anything else for the rest of my time in Europe, or maybe the rest of the year.

“Your fault,” he said, and pointed into the distance, like an Irish Setter/ Springer-spaniel sheepdog herding Eve from the red-roped Garden.

Chastened, I went with my appointed attendant-carer. Errol, bless him, was not blessed with a countenance indicative of high intelligence, but rather had a full-cheeked, long-nosed face without a visible mouth.  I sensed that he would have extremely limited English comprehension, but I smiled engagingly at his back as he took me past the security checkpoint via the passageway for VIPs, airline crewmembers, and American idiots. He led me silently to a Turkish Airlines ticketing desk, and we did not have to stand in line to speak to the woman working there. “I missed my flight,” I lamented.

The woman in the blue headscarf looked bemused, as if to ask, why was I telling her this? “OK,” she said.

I showed her my itinerary – in English – and she looked at it awhile before asking, “What airport?”

“Right now?” I said, stupidly. “Istanbul. Going to Navsehir.”

“No, today airport.”

“Oh! Today I came from, um, Budapest.” I hesitated because for the past week I’d been mixing up the names “Budapest” and “Istanbul.” This confusion had resulted in my actually purchasing the wrong bus ticket from Sofia, buying and walking away with a ticket for Turkey when I’d mean to ask for one to Hungary (I’d thought it was very cheap!) and my informing an editor at JETSETTER that my Budapest buddy, Ryan, was an expert on Istanbul. “Hungary,” I added, just to make sure.

“Budapest?”

“Yes,” I said, in my basic-English-for-second-language-speaker-syntax, which is free of all tenses other than the present. “Already. I come here from Budapest. Now go to Navsehir.”

She shook her head and said that there were no flights out tonight to Navsehir, but there was one to Kaiseri. “Great,” I said, hoping that Kaiseri was near Sacred House. “I’ll take it.”

She said something else I didn’t understand, and I asked her to repeat it. The second time, I thought she said, “Budapest flight today?”

“Yes.” I repeated. “Today I come from Budapest.”

“Budapest flight today?” I thought she said.

“Yes,” I said, emphatically.

“OK.” She bent her veiled head over my boarding pass. As she typed, I realized that her previous question had been not, “Budapest flight today?” but “Budapest flight too late?” or possibly “Budapest flight delayed?” and I had just unknowingly misinformed her that my flight had been late, and therefore – she had thought – I was entitled to a free ticket on a later flight to my destination. Or so I thought she thought; I’ll never know. A more ethical person would have interrupted her work to disabuse her; I let her go ahead and issue me a free change.

Then Errol led me down a lift and through many passages to the baggage claim area in the domestic arrivals hall. Naturally, my bag was not there. My bag, as I understood it, had been checked through to Navsehir, because I had not needed clear customs there in Istanbul. I had verified that fact on board the plane with an actual blue-kerchiefed TA employee who spoke English, and I was confident that she had not misled me. There was no possibility of my bag being in the domestic hall, unless someone on the TA flight 2020 that I had missed had removed my bag from the hold when I did not show up. Despite its many security measures, I doubted that the airline would have the efficiency required to have taken that step. I waited 30 seconds, peering intently at the 3 suitcases circling around, before telling my escort that my bag was not there, no, definitely.

Looking forlorn, and seeming younger every time I looked at him, Errol – really more a boy than a man — led me back up the lift and back to the handsome and busy supervisor, who was again on the phone and engrossed in several urgent face-to-face conversations. Errol proved that he had a mouth and demonstrated his ability at speaking and getting attention, and the supervisor said to me – in between statements in Turkish to other people — that my bag must be in the international terminal’s baggage hall.

I said that this was unlikely, because the bag had been checked through to Navsehir, which was as he knew a domestic airport.

“You should pick it up,” he said. “Customs.”

“But I thought I  could go through customs in Navsehir!” I protested. “I looked it up, on the plane. In the magazine. With a Turkish Airlines flight attendant.”

This was clearly too much English information, and after a pause in which the supervisor studied first a copy of the inflight magazine I’d mentioned, and then  the departures board, showing my plane for Nevsehir leaving at 7.30 pm, less than an hour away, he repeated that I must go back to the international terminal, find and retrieve my bag, and bring it to him – he personally would check me in and see that my bag got on the correct plane. And then his second phone rang.

“I don’t think my bag is there,” I complained, as he began a new conversation. “And I don’t have time before the flight closes.” I had learnt that flights close 15 minutes before take-off.

Something huge whacked the back of my leg — my BAD leg, and it buckled and I almost fell down before I grabbed the counter for support. I yelped “OW!” in an American, unseemly manner, and turned to see an embarrassed-looking Turkish man moving away with his baggage cart full of heavy suitcases, the one he’d just stopped by running into my person. “Pardon,” he said, but I was still aggrieved and in pain.

The supervisor, of course, had not noticed the man from the crowd: from his (limited) point of view, all he knew was that I’d screamed, fallen onto the counter, looked away, and now looked even more upset. I WAS more upset — the man had banged his cart into my BAD leg, which now hurt even more than before.

“Mush-hurry,” the supervisor said, and then went back to Turkish. So mush-hurry I did, following the ever-receding back of Errol, through corridors, down lifts, through throngs of people and past more security points, and into those small discreet doorways marked “Airport Staff Only” which require a passkey and from which no one ever seems to emerge.

I haven’t looked on Google Maps to see how far it is between the distant ends of TA domestic terminal and Istanbul international terminal, but I’m guessing it’s about twice as far as the length of the sidewalk linking LAX’s four terminals. It seemed about half a mile. It took us a 10 or 15 minutes to walk it , and I was hobbling as fast as I could to stay up with my guide.

I couldn’t figure out if Errol was walking quickly because that was his natural pace, or because he felt obliged to walk a few paces ahead of me, the woman. As I kept catching up behind him (my left knee hurting with every step, my left heel making me limp), he would speed up and stay just ahead. We were walking twice as fast as I usually stroll and five times as fast as I would have been bearable for me with my current knee injury and recent heel damage.

Adding to my discomfort were three factors: 1) The previous night, I’d removed the taping that supports my left knee, because I thought I’d spend the next day on airplanes and would not be walking much; 2) I was carrying my backpack full of my valuables (notebook computer, camera, wallet, two passports, writing pad, about 15 pens) plus what my friend Sarah calls electro-excrement: the massive plug/adapter combo for my computer, the cables to connect my camera and computer, and chargers for everything; 3) It was hot, and I, who never sweat even at the gym, had a shiny drippy face and icky stains spreading across my fresh clothing.

As I limped along, keeping an eye on Errol’s blue and sweat-free back, I thought some more about Sy, and my friend Miho. I wondered how they’d handle the situation, and I realized that they wouldn’t be in this situation, because neither of them is overweight. So then I felt guilty and ashamed as well as out of breath and in pain.

As we went through the final security check the wrong way, the old man guarding the exit required my passport. This made me stop and rummage through my carryon for a good couple of minutes, wasting valuable time. I was further worried when the man took the passport and did not give it back.  I made the international sign for “Give me my passport back; I need it and you cannot have it; it is the property of the US government and I will die here in the airport if I lose it,” and Errol said, in English, “Bag. Passport. Exit.”  He pointed at three relevant areas of the terminal as he spoke, and I understood or hoped him to mean that after I’d collected my bag, I’d then get my passport back and would be allowed to exit the area. I didn’t believe that the guard would necessarily be there by the time we came back, but I had another passport in my bag. The Australian one had not been stamped with entry into Europe, but that seemed a small matter compared to missing my next flight. We moved on.

At the baggage claims area, my guide stopped in front of one of the carousels – I think he chose it randomly – and gestured for me to look. My bags were – quelle surprise – not on it. Then we went to the lost luggage office, where I twice examined the forty or so bags that were lost, but not mine. We then mush-hurried (me limping, him leading) over to yet another supervisor’s office, where my new best friend gave the usual rehearsal of facts (or fiction) about my situation. The conversation went on for so long that I found a free chair and fell into it, my leg throbbing. I regretted packing my aspirin in my checked baggage. In fact I regretted packing anything in my checked baggage.

After some time, the supervisor pointed in a direction far, far away from himself and said to me in mushy English: “Will search baggage.” After a little more discourse the guide and I walked out to the nearest baggage carousel, and he stopped there and indicated that I should look for my luggage. This seemed a ridiculous waste of time. There were only about 3 suitcases on the carousel, and none was mine. Furthermore, the baggage supervisor had not made a phone call or spoken to anyone else since my guide had explained my situation. Even if the supervisor had, the instant we’d left his office, summoned someone to search for my bag, and even if that person were miraculously efficient, it would not be possible for my bag already to be on the carousel.

It was 6.50 pm. If I was not at my gate at the far end of the other terminal in 25 minutes, the flight would close, I’d have to get another ticket on the next one out, and I would be doomed to an endless loop of missing planes, lying about it to get a ticket on the following flight, being told I had to get my bag before I could check in, and limping back and forth along the airport’s corridors for the rest of my life

“My. Bag. Not. Here.” I said, over-enunciating in the hopes that Errol would suddenly understand English. “No. Bag.”

The guide pointed to the mouth of the carousel, the top of the little black ramp whence luggage comes tumbling forth, if there is any. In this case the black rubber conveyor belt glided out flat and empty, metre after metre of it, as my head grew tighter around my brain. “No,” I said. “No bag.”

Errol continued to point, indicating a faith in the abilities of the supervisor, or maybe Allah, that I did not share. I knew my bag wasn’t going to come down that chute, and I knew that I had 20 minutes left to hobble back to where I’d come, get a boarding pass, and get my plane. I didn’t care if I never saw my clothes again.  “Not. Here.” I said. “It’s not here and it’s not going to be here and I really really need to get on my flight, so please will you take me back to the other terminal now? Go back. Have to. Go. Back.”

Errol nodded and continued to gaze upwards, hopefully. At that point the carousel shuddered and then stopped moving, and without actually saying out loud, “See?” I indicated with grunts and shrugs and pointing fingers that any further attempt to retrieve my luggage was hopeless and that as I’d suggested earlier, my bag was not forthcoming and we should to return to the other terminal quick-smart.  Errol, looking downcast, walked away in the direction I pointed, and I followed, trying to keep up.

After getting my passport back from the guard, Errol tried to point me far, far away from him, but I said, loudly, “No! You must come! I will get lost!” To my relief, he laughed and came with me, leading me once again back to where my plane was being refueled and restocked and, probably, re-boarded with passengers. We took a different route back to the supervisor’s desk, and I was glad my guide had come because I’d never have found my way.

As it happened, though, the so-helpful supervisor who had organized the whole excursion was gone, and so my new Turkish boyfriend, Errol,  had to re-explain the situation to someone new.

This man, too, had dark hair and dark eyes and a neat uniform with a commanding white shirt and a small cell phone at his ear. He looked in many respects like the supervisor who had been there earlier, and he also thought I should go and get my bag before boarding my flight. “I don’t have time!” I said. “It will close in a few minutes!”

He ignored me and continued talking to Errol and various other people. About once every minute, I’d interject, “I have to get to my gate!” like a cuckoo clock, and they’d ignore me some more.

When it was 7.05 pm I interrupted firmly. “I don’t care about the bag,” I said. “I have to get on this flight. I missed the last one; I can’t miss this one too. We’ll deal with the bag later.”  It was not the first time I’d suggested that we file a report and have someone search for my luggage later, but it was the first time that anyone had responded to the idea. The new supervisor looked relieved. He nodded, and strung together a few English phrases indicating that when I was far, far away, in Kaiseri Airport in fact, I should go to the luggage office and report my missing bag. An excellent idea, one I’d been thinking of for the last hour or two…

I asked for the man’s business card, so that when I got to Kaiseri the baggage authorities could call someone who could explain, but he looked upset and refused to give me his name. I think he thought I was going to have him arrested.

However, I did manage to get my next flight’s gate number from him – 107, he said, and so I started off towards it, stopping only to shake hands with Errol, the kind underling who’d mush-hurried me around the airport. I thanked him in my best (in fact my only) Turkish. He touched his heart and looked concerned; I’m sure I looked the same way.

The flight wasn’t at gate 107, but it was within sight, at gate 105. As I panted up to the waiting area, I could see that no one was boarding and the door had not yet been opened to admit passengers. It was about 7.12 pm and I rushed into the ladies’ room next to the gate. I spent a maximum of 2 or possibly 2 and ½ minutes in there, washing off the sweat, and when I came out, they were doing last call for my flight. The last few people were passing by the counter; I was the final person to board, and the most grateful passenger Turkish Airways has ever known.

 Post-script: At Kaiseri Airport, the reporting of the missing bag didn’t go so smoothly. I’m not going to blog about it.

Suffice to say that the next morning, as I returned from my ballooning expedition and sat down on the terrace for breakfast, the manager – who had already rung TA half a dozen times that day, using her influence and her contacts and her impeccable Turkish and manners to get someone to pay attention and find my bag — called me to look at the street down below. There was a man opening the back of a white minivan, and from it he was taking my bag. The staff at Sacred House had it in my room within minutes.

Sweaty Panic in Instanbul

My flight itinerary from Budapest to Navsehir (in Cappadocia) indicated a comfortable layover in Istanbul. I got in about 2 pm, and my next flight on Turkish Airlines left at 5.45 pm. It was plenty of time to make the connection and maybe grab some Internet as well.

The flight from Istanbul was exemplary. No wonder Turkish Airlines was named European Airline of the Year. They offer about 9 different special meals, including Indian (Jain) vegetarian, Oriental vegetarian, ovo-lacto vegetarian, vegan, Kosher, and “special celebration” with cake.

The food was good and the service better. One of the smiling attendants, who all seemed to enjoy their work, taught me how to say “Thank you” in Turkish – it sounds like “Tea shay cur idiom,” or so I thought after many practices with the smiling, head-scared woman. She helped me again when the pilot announced that anyone on the flight who was going to a destination without customs offices must get their bags in Istanbul, clear customs, and check the bags back in. I was hopping that I would not have to do this – my bag is relatively heavy since the nuns gave me a lovely rug-runner – so I wanted to make sure my destination – NAV, or Lavisher airport, would allow me to clear customs. I The lovely air hostess looked all through the online magazine for me until she found the tiny print that indicated, clearly if minutely, that NAV had customs facilities. Therefore, she assured me, I would not need to collect my bag in Istanbul but could proceed with confidence and without luggage to the domestic terminal for my ongoing flight.

And so I did, stopping once at the airport drugstore to obtain those feminine hygiene products for which in this, my 50^th year, my need is always unpredictable and never convenient.  I then cleared security, located my gate (102) and took a seat at a relatively charming café with wireless internet (a.k.a. wifi, pronounced “veefee” in the Balkans).

I ordered water and salad (my staples when they are safe and available; otherwise it’s pizza and sour-cherry juice or elderberry lemonade) and whipped out my notebook and plugged it in, using my recently remodified and newly cumbersome adaptor, now featuring a second adaptor plug on top of the first worldwide adaptor that is the receptacle for the original AC power cord from the computer. In less than five minutes, I managed to get it all rigged up and plugged in; the battery was charging by the time my food arrived.

It took about 7 tries, and the assistance of more than one waiter, but I did eventually get a viable connection to the Internet, and went immediately to Gmail to tell the relevant rellos in London know that I’d booked a flight for the UK on August 7^th, just in time to make it to a family get-together at Jean and Ray’s house.

I wasn’t smug, but I was feeling good. I was very excited about my stay in Cappadocia, then the Bodrum Peninsula, and then my trip to Istanbul, none of which had been even a serious consideration (and two of which I’d never heard of) until last Friday afternoon when JETSETTER offered some assignments in Turkey. I bought my plane tickets yesterday, in Istanbul, and got an astonishingly cheap fare. I knew I was going to be treated well (by which I mean, indulged and catered to) by the PR/marketing people at Sacred House (just look –you’ll see why I was eager to get there http://www.sacred-house.com/) and indeed there was an email from the manager giving me the itinerary, starting with dinner or my arrival and a balloon flight starting at 4.30 a.m. the next day!

So, sitting with my salad and my Gmail on a soft seat in a clean café with a sanitary bathroom nearby, I felt that the hard part of my trip – including more than two and a half days on buses from southern Macedonia to Budapest – was over, and I could relax and enjoy the sumptuousness of five-star resorts and the wonders of Turkish nature.  I ate my salad (featuring great cherry tomatoes and some kind of small red dried pepper thing, plus fried cheese and roasted eggplant) and sent emails. When my watch said 5 pm, I put my water bottle away,  packed up the notebook, paid the bill and headed to my gate for an early check in.  The flight was at 5.45 and the gate within a hundred meters.

En passant, I checked the departures board to make sure that the gate had not changed again, and was startled to see that the first flight listed was for 1800 – 6 p.m. And, oddly, it was “closed.” Abruptly I realized that the 6 pm flight had closed because it was, in fact, in Istanbul, 6 p.m., Istanbul being one hour ahead of Budapest time.

The words, “I’ve missed my flight” flashed in large black block letters across my brain and I quickly moved through the 4 of the famous Kubler-Ross’s 5 stages of mourning: denial, anger, bargaining, sorrow, and then, instead of acceptance, panic. I shouted at myself internally for being stupid, and my throat got clogged with held-back tears.

I accosted the first uniformed person I saw and begged him to call the gate and hold the flight. “It is closed,” he said. Well, I knew it was closed: it was supposed to have gone 15 minutes ago. The point was, I wanted him to find out if the flight was still on the ground and if it could be re-opened to permit me to board, but he directed me away from him – the first of a long series of people to do so for the next several hours –  and told me I must ask at the Turkish Airlines counter.

The counters were not in sight, but I ran (on my bad knee, remember, which I am supposed to be RESTING) in the direction of his pointing arm, and then stopped another blue-uniformed person and begged for help. She told me I must go to one of the Turkish Airlines desks, which, as she indicated, were behind a formidable glass partition on the other side of a one-way security checkpoint through which people were exiting, coming towards me.  “But how do I get there?” I wailed.
“You must talk to the security,” she said. Well, I thought I was talking to the security, but she waved towards the far end of the barriers, about 40 feet away from her and conveniently out of hearing range. I ran there, hoping I might still find someone to hold the flight for me, but there was no way through the checkpoint. I turned back the other way I’d come, dashed past the woman (who avoided eye contact) and, at the far end of the checkpoints, I saw a small guarded gate with perhaps a security guard there. I don’t know why the woman had pointed me in the opposite direction; probably it was to get me away from her.

Going through the security gate were a youngish man and a woman, obviously a couple traveling together. As the guard was checking the husband’s pass or papers, I slid into place behind him, at the same time that the wife went through the open gate, unnoticed by the guard. The man passed through and the guard looked at me, and at the other woman, confused. Maybe the guard thought the man had two wives, one conventional and one a fat, panting, middle-aged American hippie. I held up my boarding pass as if I too had authority to pass the wrong way into a secure area, and the guard looked away and let me in.

I dashed to the closest TA desk, and said to the woman working there, “I’ve missed my flight.” I wasn’t intending to cry, but my voice broke on the last word and I didn’t stop myself. The only thing I know about relating to customer-service personnel is that it’s a good idea to emulate their own facial expression and affect as soon as they set eyes on you – that way they feel identification with you and are more likely to help. I learnt this from someone who taught salespeople, and I’ve found it enormously helpful in the past, but I was too distraught to try to mirror the woman in front of me, and besides, I thought crying might help.

She looked into my wet eyes, astonished and not unsympathetically, shook her head and said I had to go to a Turkish Airlines desk, over there. She pointed behind her. Well, I knew for sure that I was at a Turkish Airlines desk  — the row behind her was identical to the row she was sitting in – and I was hesitant to move again when I had a sympathetic person paying attention to me. “Which one?” I said.

“Safari mmurgruh,” she said, once or twice. Like a lot of Turkish and Macedonian people she seemed to think that repeating words I didn’t understand, and saying them more loudly, would help me realize their meaning. I squinted and did not move. Then she pointed to the top of her little booth and said “N. Supervisor.”  Her own booth had a “G” or something over it, and so I realized that she was trying to help by directing me to another letter of the alphabet, presumably a more important booth.

Running towards the second row, I didn’t see any Ns anywhere. But I did see another TA official and asked him where the supervisor was. He pointed to another booth – I think it was a letter ‘J’ or something – and opened the special dividing rope that marked it off from the general TA queuing areas.

I stood panting and impatient while the three people under the J all spoke desultorily and thoughtfully to the couple ahead of me in line. I couldn’t understand and therefore deemed unimportant the conversation they were having, and I found myself becoming very bad company, a very ugly American indeed at least inside my head.

And so came one of the great lessons of the trip so far. At the worst moment of the last 2 months, I found myself thinking horrible things about not only the inhabitants of booth S but all the employees of Turkish Airlines,  about Turks in general and in fact all of humanity myself included. I reminded myself of the contemptible American men (GIs I bet, on leave from Kosovo) I’d seen a few days before in a train station in Belgrade, swearing and abusing the poor harassed ticket-seller in juvenile and obscene and unimaginative terms. I’d wanted then to turn to them and say something like, “It’s people like you who make me ashamed to be American,” but at this point, at booth S, it was ME who was making me ashamed to be American.

I tried to improve my state of mind. In Be Here Now, Ram Dass says that if you don’t like where you are, change your head. He also says, as the title implies, that the best way to change your state of mind is to be fully aware in the present moment in whatever circumstances you find yourself. Although I’ve found the words “Be here now” useful since I was 14 years old, and although I’ve joked with friends about our ability to be, say, about a mile away right now, or here last week, I had never before really considered the verb in that sentence: BE.

So I tried to bring my full attention and awareness to the claustrophobic little roped-in section of airport where the couple ahead of me were still conferring at length with all available staff about their own all-absorbing crisis. I thought about how Sy (Safransky) would handle that moment – this is the SUN devotee’s version of “What would Jesus Do?”.  And I thought of Sy’s essay where he spoke about praying after his daughter’s car crash – how he prayed not only for grace but also “to keep his heart open.” I took a few conscious breaths and I became aware of a section of my chest loosening a bit. I put down my carry-on bag. I thought about how probably the worst thing that would happen would be a night in Istanbul or in the airport and a flight the following morning. A loss, yes, of a comped night at a boutique resort and the balloon ride of a lifetime, but hardly a tragedy. In a few breaths, I felt calm and then, to my surprise, a little happy.

Next time: But the panic comes back

Guest blog: Fairytale travels

Today I have a guest blog from Bonnie Kraft, whose fantastic  too-brief solo on “Where Shall I Be?” every time gave me shivers on my arms and a lift inside my chest. The way she sang showed me how singing should be done.  Read her account of the Villlage Harmony trip, below:

The Wild and Crazy Adventures of a Traveling Quartet

Once upon a time there were four super singers (Bonnie, Gill, Robin and Fric) from New Hampshire and Vermont who took a very long and exciting trip to the marvelous country of Macedonia…

It was a beautiful New England summer day in late June when the four departed for their appointed rendezvous at Logan Airport for the first leg of their journey on United Airlines…Mysteriously this flight never actually occurred, and thus became the catapult for the cascade of adventures which followed with a layover in Boston, including a mouthwatering Ethiopian dinner at the Habsha Restaurant in Malden, MA, a tantalizing subway ride to view the amazing and colorful glass sculpture of an one-eyed artist, Dale Chihuly, and the new flight itinerary to Sofia, Bulgaria allowing for a delicious fruit and muesli breakfast at the Goethe Bar in Frankfort, the meeting of a famous Macedonian opera singer, and a perilous drive through Bulgaria under the hands of the good and faithful  Macedonian taxi-driver (movie star and wine smuggler) and soon to be loyal friend…Bronco of Berovo.  The quartet quickly developed a fluency with the important phases of Macedonian language…”Di mi Skopsko ve molem!” and “Fantastichno!”…..

With their arrival at the Hotel Monastir in Berovo, Macedonia, the adventure continued…Over hill and dale, the super singers wandered and explored breathtakingly beautiful country side, learning to speak unspeakable words, singing songs of mysterious Macedonian rhythms with the intoxicating sounds of accordian, tupan, tambura and kaval, and were initiated the ways of complex dances with special handholds and hidden codes of hops, skips, and kicks…”raz, dva tri.”  They met “sheeps,” spectacular horses, goats, friendly doggies, cats and kittens, peacocks, an array of unusual insects, with one singer graced by the glorious sound of the elusive nightingale. They sampled delightful honeys, sweet pears, picked juicy raspberries, heartily consumed thirst quenching watermelon and warded off illnesses with a daily dose of chicken soup, potatoes, sliced cucumbers, the reddest, sweetest, juiciest tomatoes, rich olives and cheeses and morning doses of kefir, yogurt, fresh jams and wild mountain thyme chai. And, were filled up at mealtimes with the addition of roasted and specially prepared meats of local pig, lamb and cow. They were sharply warned of the dangers lurking in deep lakes, the likely possibility of finding a frog or even a bear in the zelnikot bread, and dared to taste the breath-catching, tear-streaming, tongue-burning brilliant green peppers, learning to eat cautiously when such foods served. Fueled by the national fermented fruit drink, rakia, and the premium beer, Skopsko, the traveling quartet sang and danced into the night. Yet, most astoundingly, throughout their wanderings the traveling quartet was warmly received and welcomed into the homes and heart of the Macedonia people—on hillsides, in monasteries, in fields, on hikes, and invited into homes in the small villages and big cities by…people who smiled with twinkling eyes, extended handshakes, offered hugs and cheek kisses, kafe and rakia, and gave gifts of the heart with song, dance and treasures of family stories, little potted plants, flower bouquets, books in cyrillic, holy water, and Bulgarian Bear’s Blood wine….By the end of this wild adventure the traveling quartet had learned to sing the folk songs of Macedonia in full voice with open heart and dance joyfully supporting one another…