Reminiscence from Anatolia- Part Three: Another Delayed Flight

My tryst with Turkey started in 2006… when, while sitting in the class of American University in Cairo…I noticed that one of my classmates was reading a book by Orhan Pamuk… “Istanbul”.

Who is he…? I asked, ignorantly. He had an exclamation mark over his face… what you don’t know Orhan Pamuk, the Nobel Prize Winner Literary figure from Turkey… you must read him… he is a great writer.

And so I picked up his first book Istanbul, a non-fiction… graduating to “My Name is Red”- one of the most interesting books that I have ever read…. Then “Snow”- book that earned him a Nobel Prize. Snow, incidentally, is set in the city of Kars.

So here I was in Kabul International Airport… waiting for another delayed flight, this time to Istanbul. The last night was uneventful… it wasn’t meant to be that way… my friend had organized a get together at his place… and a number of my friends had poured in there… in anticipation to meet me. But they all left; after waiting for more than 3 hours… one of them quipped… knowing my determination to travel… I would even cycle all the way to Kabul… and right now must be atop the Hindu Kush…

The delayed flight opened a new opportunity… of seeing the Kabul-Mashhad flight. The Hazara community of Afghanistan is Shiite… they have extensive linkages with Iran… and therefore any Iran bound flight ought to have a number of Hazaras flying in it. Slowly poor, unkemptly dressed Hazaras started trickling in the airport waiting lounge… I couldn’t help noticing the beautiful Hazara women… their beauty have surreal and poignant proportions… one of them, wearing a Chador (an Iranian dress prescribed for women) was particularly beautiful… she had two daughters… less than five years of age….

Somebody tapped my shoulder… “Are you by any chance from Kandahar”… Yes! I am, but how do you know… wait don’t you work for the Afghan Turk High School in Kandahar, and met me in a local marriage party. Yes you do. He was a Turk; working for the Turk School… was on his way to Turkey, where he lived in Izmir.

I started chatting with him… he knew a little bit of English and that helped… he started boasting about his school and how his students perform well, wherever they go- India, Pakistan, China and Turkey…

Turkey operates a number of Turkish High Schools all over the world… especially concentrating on countries in Central Asia, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Azerbaijan. It is step to promote Turkish language and culture… as somebody confided in me, while I was in Turkey… that though Turkey thinks itself as an emerging power… it also realizes that due to lack of economy of scale (of population), the idea of Turkey could always remain stunted… it wants to propagate its idea through these schools.

I was curious… how your student do cope in China… they go to Urumqi and Kashgar… the cradle of Uighiur culture… and the Uighiur speak a variant of Turkish language. Interesting information, both of them.

We were joined by two of his friends… both Turks… from Kars… when they realized that I was going to Turkey for a visit, they invited me to Kars. Its beautiful… they assured me… you wouldn’t regret.

The flight was getting more delayed… I cursed the flight when I paid 100 Afghani for a cup of coffee… why did I even bother to use Ariana Airways… for an extra 100 dollars, I could have got a connection via Dubai… Safi Airways and Turkish Airlines.

I strayed back to the same Hazara family that I had admired a few hours ago… this time two Turks were playing with the two little girls… trying to strike a conversation with them, know their name… the girls were giggling incessantly… it was a beautiful sight… I photographed them and thereafter joined the four of them. And became their interpreter… broken English to broken Dari; and perfect Dari to perfect English.

What is their name… a Turk asked me… “Naam-e-shaan chi ast”… I asked their father… Nargis and Nazia… the Turks exclaimed- it’s a Turkish name!!! And broke into an animated conversation about the probable nationality… Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan… No, they are Afghans… I told them… but they have a Turkish name… No they have a Persian name… and lectured them about the assimilation of languages… my area of expertise… they sounded unconvinced. The debate however was short-lived… Iran bound flight was about to fly…

I had to wait for 2-3 more hours… the Istanbul flight took off at around half past two… some 6 hours late. Flight was uneventful. It passed through, what I presume was, Caspian Sea and then Black Sea… the terrain that I was looking below… was so very different from what I have seen till date… a red desert… probably Turkmenistan… a mighty river… probably Amu Daria…

And then I saw lights… a huge city… huge for even me… who had seen Delhi, Mumbai, Cairo and Kolkata from air… it was Istanbul. I had nurtured this dream for last few years to see this city… so momentous that even history pales into insignificance in front of it.

Istanbul Airport is huge… with terminals reading 203, 339… I presume that it must be having at least 350 terminals… was it bigger than Dubai… I really don’t know… but certainly more methodical… makes more sense… and arrow heads telling you where to proceed… or probably, by now, I was more attuned to international traveling than I ever was…

A metro ride to Zeytinburnu… and then Tram ride to Sultanahmet… I was standing in front of the site, where I have been dreaming to be… for years altogether… I kept on hearing the names of places as were being announced in the metro and tram… was comparing them with their spelling in Turkish Script (that is Latin-based)…

A tout approached me at Sultanahmet… I told him, I have a reservation… he smiled asked me where I am from … I replied India… he said Welcome to the second paradise on earth… and then without bothering any further… left for other potential customers.