A tight-lipped spring marinates the petrified pond of frozen dreams in clinical light. Intimidated and blunted we count the days until summer parole and regurgitate past adventures. From a letter sent to a friend in September 2008:
"I had oral surgery today, they removed a wisdom tooth calcified inside my mandible. The drugs were great, copious amounts of laughing gas topped up with some undisclosed "sedatives"! Right now I'm a zombie with half-face the size of a coconut and a gashing wound that fills my mouth with blood every 2 hours. Which state of narcosis reminds me of a story that happened this summer in Istanbul - I'll recount it in narcolepsy-inducing detail.
We became friends with our hostel's owner, a sarcastic fellow of affable manner and spent pleasant evenings drinking raki and discussing with him and some of his Korean guests. On one of these occasions our host decided to invite us for a trip to a 'wild' beach secluded in the north of the Bosphorus. It transpired that his invite was not just a sign of unbridled sympathy: he was in the process of courting a girl and basically wanted us to be his fluffers, since a first date on the beach can be delicate. However, on the night before the trip he told us that the girl cannot make it. Valiantly, we decided to go by ourselves; he explained how to get to The Beach.
We left in the morning, it was still fresh when we crossed the bridge over the Golden Horn and took a bus towards the middle of the Bosphorus. The ride was fascinating from two perspectives: the left hand side perspective was mid century and XIXth century mansions where the ultra-rich live. The Pill was gap mouthed at the sight of old ladies being served teas on immense terraces by uniformed maids. The right hand side perspective was revamped docks, where un-rich people walked, fished and splashed in the sea, interrupted by little harbours with yachts and sellers of roasted corn. After an hour or so of this we got to our mid-way destination, a small satellite town of Istanbul. From here we were supposed to hop on a boat that would take us to The Beach. We got drinks and food, including sujuk and assorted baklavas, from a very authentic-looking Carrefour supermarket and headed for the harbour. There, said boat was boarding hordes of people going to the virgin, secluded, wild beach of Buyuk Liman. As we started walking merrily towards it one of the 5 men in charge said: "You are tourists? We cannot take you to the beach. Only Turkish people can go there". He brought on another person who confirmed that Buyuk Liman is a military, strategic beach and the soldiers recently ordered that only Turks be allowed there (for fear of spies posing as innocent tourists, bent on stealing military secrets, we assume). We were advised to go to another, closer, beach where foreign tourists were allowed. At this Pill threw a fit arguing we're not even proper tourists but rather progressive travelers, that this is either a misunderstanding or an evil plot etc-etc. As her display of outrage failed to impress the boat people, she started walking around the little harbour huffing and puffing and vociferating in English. Her tactic worked: as usual, a courteous local asked her in broken English what the problem is. While we were trying to explain, a fourth person intervened, a stout mustachioed man of about 65 with a sailor's cap (think Capitaine Haddock) shouting out from his little boat. Our initial interlocutor translated: the moustached captain was ready to take us to Buyuk Liman for "Five" (hand sign) each, return. The "Turks only" boat was charging 7.50 each so we hastily got on his wobbly boat, feeling excited and naughty, happy to show the military who's smarter.
The ride was great: the captain started the engine by connecting some sparking wires and off we went, slowly, keeping close to the shore, trying to grip on to something while waves cut by bigger and faster boats threatened to throw us overboard. It was hot and the sea was dark blue and the jovial captain told us he is Greek and shared his sailor's cigarettes with me. At a certain point I was even entrusted with stirring the boat while he had to mend the wires in the engine. I started my critical mission by shouting "Shit!" a few times in panic, convinced that I was going to run us straight into a tiny boat unluckily positioned in our way and bring to a brutal end the romantic scene going on inside it. Then, just when I thought I got a gist of it and put on a cocky pirate's grin, I was replaced by the captain… We passed by the "tourist beach" we were directed to after being refused access to the big boat and it was hoarded, a rectangle of sea fenced off and bubbling with people of all ages splashing like overenthusiastic sardines. We laughed haughtily and continued our journey while thinking that "5 each" is a veeery low price for such a ride.
An hour later we're there, we dock and the captain tells us he will wait for us as long as necessary and would we mind paying him now? Of course not, we say, and Primrose radiantly takes out a tenner. The captain looks bewildered: "No, no, this is 10. I said 50 each, a 100!" We're both petrified, it's a lot of money, 100. As we subsequently figured out, the captain had approached the trip as a smuggling operation, hence the price. Primrose opens her wallet demonstratively: only 20 left in there (since, cunningly, she always hides the rest in a secret compartment). The captain, with the grace of one that has seen worse, assumes the loss: "Ok, it was a misunderstanding, but in this case I cannot wait for you here. You should board the first [evil] boat, they are taking bulks of people back every 1.5 hours or so and you don't need a ticket". Pushed by some kids gathered to see the foreigners dock the captain says "Thank you very much" in English and leaves in a cloud of sparks and smoke. We feel a pang of shame, quickly washed away by the smug glee of having made it to the forbidden beach.
The forbidden beach is crowded but we manage to find a secluded spot by climbing to the top of a big rock facing the sea. On the other side of it are two older gents, looking fit in their 1970s trunks, diving, swimming and eating coquettish salads. We stare at the landscape: it's near the place where the Bosphorus reaches the Black Sea, a wide strait surrounded by mountains eroded into elongated tumuli, covered in forest except for their water-side end where vertical granite shows. They look like pastrami chunks covered in spice and with a couple of slices cut out at the tip. We swim excitedly and try to protect ourselves from the burning sun, observe the inflatable boats doing military exercises up and down the strait. At a certain point, a young couple shows up and ask permission to sit by us. They wonder where we're from, are happy with the reply and proceed to install themselves. The boy is an energetic, irresistible characters: he runs around, chatters, jumps, puffs, huffs, swims, splashes, tries to entice his girlfriend that can barely swim to follow him, mobilizes all of us to fish large mussels to cook later, offers cola. We swim and obediently pick mussels and laugh with them despite the language barrier; the older gents collect loads of mussels, give us apricots and swim to a nearby beach from where they bring back an abandoned grill and some coals. A fire is lit. We take out the sujuk: the youngsters are impressed. We grill, we devour. Then we grill the mussels and devour them too. We take out some beer. More approving sounds and gestures from the youngsters. The older gents refuse politely both meat and alcohol.
The young lad chips in by taking out of his pocket a massive lump of weed and asks me to roll one. He's got king size cigarette papers, I've got rolling tobacco. He makes me put in 10 times the amount I intend to, so we figure "ditch-weed from his grandma's backyard, sure to be weak". The older gents help me gather the litter and then leave us to our shenanigans. We drink beer and smoke the joint: the lad entices his girlfriend to have a couple of tokes using Pill's example. She takes a couple of deep ones, being a consummate cigarette smoker. A few minutes later the stuff hits me: it's massively strong! We start tripping, laughing, giggling, telling jokes that seem utterly hilarious even if we don't really understand each other, share the assorted baklavas that taste like ambrosia. Shortly after we decide to leave them to their by now languorous flirting. We say our goodbyes and head for the boat that is loading people in.
I find the ascent and descent of that big rock tricky since I'm quite trippy, but my stoned body has a certain fluidity. The beaches are now half-empty and we notice how beautiful they are, a string of little limpid alcoves surrounded by white sand, sculptural granite and pines. As we get closer to the boat I shrewdly put my beach towel on my head as if protecting myself against the sun and walk confidently towards the entrance. "No, No! Problem, Problem!" shouts the first of the boatmen to casts his eyes on my expert disguise. I grin widely: "No problem, man, no problem, we'll just hop on". "No! No! Problem! Ticket, ticket". "We'll buy tickets on the boat" I reply from behind my grin which seems to have assumed an oversized life of its own. After this exchange goes on for a while the man decides that convincing me would be a long, tortuous and unworthy process and allows us to climb on the boat. We stumble on deck, take place among the local tourists and proceed to enjoy the magnificent sight of half immersed pastrami chunks glistening in the early sunset. The conductor brutally stops our reverie: ticket. "No ticket", we say; he thinks we don't understand him, illustrates with tickets; all people were given one on the way to Buyuk Liman, it transpires, and you need it to get back. "No ticket", we say. We offer him the price of two tickets. He looks very surprised, doesn't take the money, says "OK!" in a rather hostile voice (in my paranoia) and leaves. Helpful teenagers beside us try to further explain that we should show him our tickets. "We don't have any". People gaze at us, I'm not sure if with curiosity or hostility towards the stupid, arrogant foreigners. We wait, torn between pleasurable contemplation and scenarios of 'Midnight Express' situations where the military interrogate and jail us. After some schizoid 15 minutes a boy comes, smiles cheekily, takes our money and gives us 2 tickets. They probably asked people on shore through radio and, once again, decided that making a fuss about two imbeciles is not worth it. We get to the shore and walk away stiffly while the 13 boatmen gathered pretend not to see us. We return to Istanbul and keep walking around for hours, giddy, still high…"
