All Of Monday’s Reasons - 25
25. Leaving Turkey With The Dane
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When we got back to the train station, it was time for him to catch his train to Belgrade. He found his seat and leaned out the window to me.
“The first thing you do when you get to Belgrade is go to the Nigerian embassy and tell them about your friend. They should be able to help him.”
“Okay, goodbye, Cliff.”
“See you, Benson.”
I turned and started walking to a stall to buy some more water. Behind me I heard the train leave.
I was heading north, through Yugoslavia with no fixed plans other than to get back to Western Europe for a while.
I bought a bottle and got on my train to find a seat early. I walked through a dark carriage to a compartment with a young man in.
“Are these seats free?” I asked him.
“Yes, sure,” he said. He sounded Scandinavian.
“I think it’s time to leave Turkey,” I said, “I mean, it’s a great place but I need to go somewhere where you can at least drink the water.”
He laughed too much and said, “You’re American?”
My accent at the time was stronger than it is now, so to make life easier, I just lied: “Yes, and yourself?”
“Danish. I live in Kobenhavn”
I hauled my rucksack up onto the overhead rack and collapsed into a couple of seats. I sat there in the dark wishing the train would leave. The Dane was saying something about Denmark. Five minutes later a German couple walked into the compartment. He was about twenty seven and she was no more than nineteen. They were embarrassingly in love and my mind turned the cultural differences, their attitudes towards intimacy and the logistics thereof.
This made me hungry, and I realised I had no food, so with ten minutes before the train was due to leave. I had some Turkish money left, so I ran to a snack truck outside the station.
“No, you will not be back in time! The train will leave without you if you go and get food,” the Dane anxiously explained. He was worrying for me, so I gave him permission, although it was more of an order, to throw my rucksack out the window and back onto the platform if it left without me on it.
My small amount of lira left afforded me to splash out a little. I was going to Yugoslavia, where ethnic tension and the ensuing civil unrest had put inflation through the roof and Turkish banknotes may have been worthless for all I knew. What was certain was that I would have to eat, so I bought two cheese sandwiches, a large bag of crisps, two beers and a bottle of water. I paid the man, packed the goods into the paper bag and turned to walk back to the train.
Before I could even take a step in that direction, I was sidled up to by a heavily made up woman in a short skirt, padded bra and dyed blond hair who had been breathing down my neck while I was paying.
“English? Deutsch?”
“Excuse me?”
“Francais?”
“English. What?”
“We make fuck. Seventy five thousand lira. Very good.” About seven pounds. I was lost for words.
“What you want. We make fuck,” she said.
“Excuse me,” I said and walked a long way around her, heading for the train. Behind me I heard the stiletto heels walk a short distance in the other direction followed by her hoarse voice, “English? Deutsch?”
I walked back wondering how prostitution could be legal in a country where virginity is chaste. Istanbul even has a fully legal red light district which has served as a port of call for the world’s sailors for over three centuries.
My train’s engine was running when I got back to the platform and halfway down the carriages I saw my rucksack being hoisted out the window. I broke into a run, shouting “STOP! I’m HERE!”
My rucksack teetered on the window ledge above the platform.
I bolted into my compartment where the Dane was hoisting aloft everything I owned.
“It’s OK,” I said, breathless, “I’m here. The train’s not moving yet.” I grabbed my bag back off him.
I handed a beer to the Dane. “Pass it around, we’re celebrating.”
“What happened?”
“We’re leaving Turkey, we’re going west. Drink up.”
I opened my can and guzzled half of it straight away. I lowered the can, paused, burped and said, “Let’s go.”
The train pulled away like in a motherfucking movie and I drank to my timing.