TURKISH TALES

Have you ever spent most of your weekend in an airport in Turkey? Well I did in 1997. Here is what happened. It is almost unbelievable.  
I arrived at Atatürk Airport, Istanbul after losing my luggage in transit from Ankara. There had been fog in the night and subsequently all flights in and out of Istanbul had been either delayed or cancelled. Unfortunately, those of us who didn't speak Turkish (about 90% of the passengers) weren't actually told this vital piece of information, so chaos reigned supreme in the frenzy of languages which flew around the departure lounge.

In this chaos I met a laconic Frenchman who travelled extensively and had just returned from Kurdish territory where everyone carried guns which he found ‘quite stressful’.  After an hour's conversation with him about the peculiarities of life he said: ‘but losing luggage isn't that bad, you know.’ He was right of course, there are worse things than losing luggage and the next two days showed me exactly what they were.

This was the incredible scenario: the transit lounge had been taken over by 50 Muslims kneeling on mats, facing Mecca and performing intricate rituals whilst praying to Allah, they were totally oblivious to the mayhem surrounding them. A whirling dervish of 8 Nepalese children, dressed in the stark paradox of long white traditional costumes, Marks and Spensers cardigans and Nike trainers, danced expertly in and out of the prayers and passengers as they battered each other with toys. Italian Mafia bosses, flanked by Hench-men with shoulders the size of Knossos, screamed  curses at Turkish Airlines. People cried, shouted and prayed for a flight. This was only the beginning of a 72 hour wait.

My friendly Frenchman told me ‘It's important to ask the right questions in Turkey - if you don't, you won't get the right answers.’  I had been asking the wrong questions for hours. Questions like:  ‘What time is flight 981 to Heathrow taking off?’  The right question was:  ‘Has a flight arrived from Heathrow yet?’  This would have given me answer. ‘No.’    After 6 hours it dawned on me that the airport official I kept questioning must have read the same Naseddin Hoca story as me. [ Hoca was a Turkish folklore philosopher who lived in Central Anatolia in 1208.]

 ‘One day some men found Hoca pouring the remains of his yogurt into the Aksehir Lake. “Hoca, what are you doing?” they asked. “I am turning the lake into yogurt,” he replied. When they laughed at him, he said “But you never know, perhaps it might.”’

The official had obviously been told to infect passengers with Hoca's optimism as he kept telling all the stranded neurotics ‘Your flights will be taking off in the next hour. Just keep watching the flight information boards for more details.’  We actually believed him!

Then I heard magical words from some official-looking people: ‘Anyone for Heathrow?’ 6 of us jumped up screaming  ‘Yes!’  ‘You are British Airways passengers, aren't you?’ When we whispered the awful words 

 ‘No, Turkish airlines.’  They sniggered before disappearing into a big, beautiful plane. Britain had never seemed so beautiful or more remote at that moment. I knew the situation was becoming desperate when I began to long for the old British Rail sandwiches. [Those of you who can remember them will know exactly how desperate that is!]

My five newly discovered companions and I carried on watching the flight board obsessively to find out which gate we should go to. This board had shown the same information about  flight 981 for 6 hours: ‘Delayed.’ Suddenly one of our eagle-eyed group noticed the information had changed - our flight number had disappeared from the board completely! We all started running around like headless chickens trying to discover someone who spoke English who could tell us what had happened. After 10 minutes we did - our flight had just taken off without us! I sat shell-shocked with precisely 25p in my pocket, no luggage and after 12 hours of travelling was still in the same place. Things could only get worse I thought - they did. 

We discovered 400 other passengers trying to find accommodation in Istanbul at the same time. It was difficult for the six of us who were going to Heathrow to make ourselves understood at the information desk. ‘You want how many bedrooms? 6!’  The incredulous airport official's eyebrows reached the top of his head as he contemplated the peculiarities of the British. ‘We don't know each other, you see,’ someone said. But it was no good – the official couldn't understand so I ended up sharing a room with two women I'd nodded to in the airport. Have you ever tried sleeping with people you’ve just met in the middle of a dodgy area of Istanbul?

After a 15 minute taxi drive to an area that was 25 minutes away, I felt  nauseous, so the fact that when we walked into this flea-pit,  all Turkish male eyes turned towards us, didn't register until much later - I just wanted to sleep.  Our room had three barrack-type beds in it, a sheet that covered a navel, half a blanket and a door with an unpredictable lock.  What more couldn't one want, I wondered? I soon found out:  a toilet with no toilet paper or seat, a sink with no plug, a raucous Turkish party in another room , numerous rattlings on our door from the party-goers, three calls to prayer from  a loudspeaker at the nearby Mosque and two strangers snoring copiously in uneven harmony. It was a long, sleepless night.

However, every trauma finishes eventually and this was no exception. We were driven back to airport at 5 a.m. and after a  five hour wait, the few of us who’d been left stranded were allowed onto a plane.  We almost wept with relief.  

When I got home, I lay in bed for two days. When I had recovered I wrote a long letter to Turkish airlines outlining all the problems we had endured.

In reply, I received the following unforgettable words:

`We are sorry not being able to treat whole passengers properly during the long delays of our flights at the airport due to fog inducing chaos.'

From the distance of time, I can now laugh about the experience.

So much so, that earlier this year I returned to Istanbul and this time the experience was wonderful. I wonder if my letter did change Turkish airlines just a little.  I like to think so.