Returning to Istanbul, I feel that odd
sense of transition as if it is the end of a long trip. In reality I’ve been
away from the city little more than 10 days, but it feels like so long since I
have left that I felt sure life must have moved on without me, but somehow
everything remains just as I left it. The carpet sellers are still engaging
sales tactics worthy of medals; the traffic continues to speed around
shell-shocked pedestrians with reckless abandon; the potholed streets still
seem to rise out of the ground and grasp you by the foot as you hobble by. At
the roadside the young boys in their red and gold waistcoats are still twirling
and tossing strips of gluey ice cream around their heads; the scent of slow-cooked
meat still seeps out into the streets and over-enthusiastic waiters are
predictably pouncing on each hungry-looking passerby.
.
This is my last day of enjoying the city
without a purpose, of wandering aimlessly and discarding time. Tomorrow my
assignment begins, a week of updating the new Rough Guide to Istanbul, first
under the guidance of the author Terry Richardson, and then alone. I’m a little
nervous but mainly excited. Part of me is too exhausted from the tour to panic
over any last minute details and I’m thankful for this.
.
I can’t wait to figure out the nuts and
bolts of compiling a guidebook and to trundle exhausted through unknown streets
in search of the kind of place that will make travelers remember why they came
here in the first place. I’m even looking forward to mashing together my few
words of Turkish, pigeon English and desperate mime in an effort to source
information. Or agonizing over descriptions in the hope of de-mystifying a
little of the chaos that is Istanbul. But most of all, I can’t stop the thought
in the back of my head, that maybe, just maybe, this might not be the last time
I get to do this. Because for me – a lunatic note-taker and indiscriminate lover of travel with a childlike fascination for anything out of the ordinary - there surely couldn’t be a more perfect job.
