June.
âYouâve missed the spring,â I said to myself.
I told her that I would meet her at the airport. Her hotel was near my house so there would be no problem about seeing each other.
I spent one of the longest hours of my life in a smokefilled café at Atatürk Airport, which had recently been expanded in an attempt to compete with Athens. Anyone who thinks the number of cigarettes people smoke increases with the excitement of seeing off or greeting loved ones should know that Turks never need an excuse to smoke. It was therefore quite normal to sit in a café where clouds of smoke burned my eyes and made it almost impossible to breathe.
I had no option but to join the overwhelming majority of smokers.
Was I excited that I was soon to see Petra? Had I missed her? I tried to visualize her face and the effects the years would have had on her. What a life she had led â and what had I done? I had just stopped myself from going deeper into a misplaced, mistimed evaluation of my life when the airport Tannoy system announced that Petraâs plane had landed.
Going to meet Petra at the airport was a complete waste of time. The place was full of journalists trying to get a glimpse of the film crew arriving in Istanbul. But it was soon over. A team of minders moved into place to get Petra away from the crowd. However, she noticed me waving and jumping about trying to catch her attention, and yelled at the men to let me through. A few seconds later, we found ourselves next to each other, surrounded by a wall of beefy men who were steering us towards the exit.
I hadnât taken account of the fact that my long-time friend was a star of sorts and the crew clearly hadnât expected that Petra might have a half-witted friend like me in Istanbul, because they had a limousine waiting for them. When I saw the limo, there was no way I was
going to say, âDonât go with these brutes, Iâll go and get my car.â My â82 Peugeot would have cut a pathetic fıgure next to that awesome limo. In the end, I yelled out, as she was being bundled into the car, that Iâd see her at the hotel. Petra waved at me to signal OK, the chauffeur put his foot down and they sped off.
I drove along the coastal road from the airport to the hotel, with the Bosphorus opening out into the Marmara Sea on one side and a mixture of lower- and middle-class neighbourhoods with their tall ugly buildings on the other. The traffic wasnât too bad for a Friday and I was even able to drive at full throttle. It was perhaps the first time since coming to Istanbul that its frenzied beauty, which had survived both indifference and efforts to destroy it, did not play on my mind. I was thinking of Petra. For a moment, that expression on Petraâs face⦠As if her heart needed recharging, as if she couldnât cope with life, as if she was broken in some way⦠There is a kind of sadness that can permeate peopleâs faces and expressions that is not visible in photographs⦠No cream or cosmetic surgery can eliminate it⦠It is a deep, dark, incurable sadness.
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Eventually I got stuck in traffic at Sarayburnu, by which time the sun was setting over the Golden Horn. I needed to phone Pelin to tell her not to wait for me, but to close up the shop and go home. I had left saying I wouldnât be long, but that was hours ago. I hadnât taken account of the Friday-evening traffic and I was battling against the sort of traffic chaos that a true Ä°stanbullu would avoid at all costs. If I went to the shop, I would be late for Petra at the hotel; if I didnât go to the shop, Pelin would be left waiting there for me.
It was a moment when a mobile was essential, utterly indispensable. I could have parked the car and looked for a phone booth, but even if Iâd found a parking space, it was unlikely that thereâd have been a phone nearby. I was about to explode with frustration when I