Taxi!

I am a suburbanite, and have always had a car at my disposal. So learning to use public transportation is brand new concept. My familiarity with taxis are confined to what I've seen on movies and television--you jump in a cab, tell the driver where you want to go, and moments later, you arrive. Not so true here. You never quite know what you're in store for when you jump in an Istanbuli cab.


The biggest shocker was that cab drivers here usually don't have any more idea on how to get to the destination than I have. The first time I watched a cabbie stop and ask for directions, I thought maybe I had a brand new driver. But when every subsequent driver did the same thing, I realized this was considered normal. The school where I take Turkish lessons is probably a five or six mile drive from my apartment. With a knowledgable driver is should take 15 minutes and cost under 10 lire. However, on one occasion, the driver stopped three different times for directions--that ride cost 20 lire and I was late to class. Yesterday, not only did my driver take the long way, but he also stopped at a gas station to air up his tires.

Luckily, as I've gotten my bearings and learned a bit more Turkish, I can now help the cabbie along---"Dus, dus!" (keep going straight) "Sola! (turn left). But even then, some of them don't believe me, and stop and ask directions anyway.

I've gotten used to the way they accelerate into traffic, directly in front of a city bus or dump truck, or how they think nothing of turning left in front of incoming traffic, even how they slam on their brakes, blow their horns and curse at whomever is slowing them down. But I just can't get used to how they tear hell-bent for leather down narrow streets crowded with pedestrians. At that point, I just close my eyes and pray.

However, a couple of weeks ago I had an incident occur that tempered my Taxi Angst. I realized one Tuesday morning that I couldn't find my cell phone anywhere--I'd searched the apartment, and sorted through the contents of my purse that I had dumped out on the table. My last hope was that I had forgotten it at Monday's class, so I decided to wait till after Wednesday's lesson before declaring it officially lost. Late Tuesday afternoon, Jim called me from the office to tell me that my cell phone had been found. Since I hadn't even told him yet that it was missing, I was a little befuddled. As it turned out, it had dropped out of my purse when I was paying the cab driver the day before. The driver used the phone directory and found the only Turkish name in it--Gokan, our driver. When Jim and Gokan went to pick it up, Jim tried to tip him, but the driver refused to take any payment. So in a city of 18 million people, one of them was lucky enough to have her lost phone returned to her, due to the kindness and diligence of a Turkish cab driver.






I think of that incident every time I get into a cab. It gives me the heart to sit down and experience the next wild ride.