A San Francisco night - walking from the Chinatown Gate up the steep hill
that is Bush Street, just before the corner of Powell and the downhill jaunt
following the cable car tracks to Union Square, I spy a face looking up at me from
the pavement - bending down I retrieve an identity card showing a beautiful
young woman identified as Ayfer ....., a Turkish national. The street is dark and
other than our small group there is no-one in sight.I decide to hand the card to
the first policeman I see.
Several steps further on, there is another card - this time showing the
name and contact details for a women’s helpline. Were both cards lost by the
same person? Was her bag stolen or were they deliberately thrown away, and if
so by whom? The young woman herself? Someone else? Was she in trouble?
Glancing up at the dark windows of an apartment building I get no answer.
Beside the pavement the border of scrubby bushes gives nothing away.
It was at this point that I realised I had not seen a single police officer
during the two days I had been in this city. I would have to post the card to
the Turkish Consulate and hope that rather than filing it away in Lost and
Found, someone there would take the time to find Ayfer and ascertain if she was
in fact alright, or in need of help.
As the closing line in Dassin’s 1948 film ‘The Naked City’said: “There are
eight million stories in the naked city, this has been one of them”…
(c)FMPDH 2012
