Have Angst, Will Travel

Ismail runs a very successful auto repair shop. I've never met Ismail or had need of his services, but I know he is successful because his shop is directly across from the guest house we are staying in and he gets a lot of business. At all hours, from fairly early in the morning until well after seven, Ismail or one of his workers is out there revving up an engine -- vrooom, vroooom, VROOOOOOOM -- and chatting with his customers. His work also entails the dragging of extremely heavy items over a gravelled stretch of tarmac, and the sound this produces really has to be heard to be believed. If you are the sort that grimaces at the sound of a fingernail dragged along a blackboard, you'd definitely have to give Ismail's gravel-dragging a miss.

It is hot here, and dusty, but it is also unbelievably beautiful From the minute our plane touched down in Istanbul, I have marveled at the trees and shrubs that grow here in profusion -- ones I grew up with, but have not seen for decades. There are eucalyptus, pepper trees, bougainvillea -- a whole botanical world I used to be familiar with. Just walking outside and seeing olives, figs and oranges on trees is enough to make me cry. And things have gone so well here that for a long time, I wondered what to write. I'm not a huge fan of travel writing where everything goes right; I'm the nasty sort who enjoys reading about the passport that went AWOL, the bottle of shampoo that decided to make a break for it, the umbrella that the traveler toyed with taking, then left behind, only to encounter the first rainfall of the year at their travel destination. So how could I be a hypocrite and treat readers to stories of balmy Mediterranean beaches and affable Turks? True, the area we are now living in resembles a building site. There are many British expatriates here, and they and the people who cater for them, seem to feel the need to post billboards every square meter, generally in lurid colors. A huge boom in property development has obviously come and gone, with many of the building sites abandoned in various stages of development. It is not unusual to see a completed villa with mature and manicured garden stuck between the concrete foundations of two other buildings, piles of bricks and bags of electrical cables still in evidence, all just a stone's throw from a massive billboard advertising a casino in flashing purple and magenta neon. Think of the tackiest stretch of road you have ever seen in Southern California, add signs in Turkish, a light, but somewhat destructive earthquake, plus a great deal of hastily-executed half-finished buildings and a generous sprinkling of rubbish, and you will have a pretty good idea of the landscape we currently enjoy. But who really cares about that when you can get freshly squeezed orange juice every 200 metres? When you have a job you were trained to do, and could, if you wished, swim in the sea up until October?

And we have been lucky: our kids are more or less coping at their new schools, and our colleagues seem an interesting, kindly bunch. My husband mentioned to one of his fellow teachers that it was difficult to get around without a car, and this man offered us his, giving us the chance to tour the countryside and visit beaches. So I have honestly pondered what to write about. So far, it almost feels like a holiday -- and who wants to hear stories of how delightful someone else's holiday is?

Then yesterday I went to meet my husband and kids after school. Wearing khaki trousers and a rumpled shirt, I got dissed by a memsahib-type in a fancy designer suit, heels, and full make-up. Youngest daughter whined that her best friend Fatima was a jerk because she thought Chinese people were the same as Japanese and insinuated that all Far-east Asians were less than civilized. She said that Ben, who is from Leeds, is a jerk because football is all he can talk about other than how many girlfriends he has. She complained that she had too much homework; that she is tired of singing the Turkish national anthem and marching around the gymnasium. Eldest was in a grumpy mood and informed me that her flip-flops were disintegrating. And flip-flops, I have seen, cost big money here -- more than I am prepared to dish out. My husband called us just after we'd walked all the way to the supermarket in the pounding heat to get muesli, which does not appear to exist in this country, along with other staples like Ryvita or peanut butter. He could not pick us up, he told us; the car had only just broken down, black smoke pouring out of it. And suddenly it hit me: this place is starting to feel like home.

Sounds like Ismail's got another customer out there. I'm betting it's a big one this time -- maybe a Landrover.

Home is where the angst is.