Istanbul: Something in the Air Tonight
Istanbul: Something in the Air Tonight
Sometimes listening to music influences your thoughts or takes you back to a moment in your life but there is something in the air. Sitting here four days on the rain still falls painting a different picture from those summer days that now seem so long ago, the feeling of waking up each morning in a warm bed not wanting to step outside in the cold. I awake to my familiar morning routine of CAY, feeding Fistik the cat having a cigarette on the balcony. The surrounding view now a familiar sight but I still have the same admiration has I did when I first arrived somehow I will never tire of this view across the Bosphorus and neither will I grow and take it for granted.
Has the day progresses still raining I begin to look forward to my wife returning home from work, it has to be said without patronizing I admire her so much not just for who she is but for the shear commitment she has in her work .Each day spending up to four hours a day just commuting to and throw and anyone who lives or has lived here the commuting can be exhausting mentally. Every day she returns home with a smile regardless of her day behind her, Fistik rolls around on the floor on her return waiting for her tummy to be rubbed .I noticed weeks ago how each day Fistik waits and hears her coming home some minutes before the key has turned, either I am going deaf or cats have a sense of hearing often shown by dogs.
[SinglePic not found]As we sit there having our evening meal and discussing the day’s events whilst the news channel airs the daily events around the city and there is never a dull moment in Turkish news media. Even if I can’t understand everything the pictures often speak louder than words for me, even in my own native language I was always far more interested in pictures or scenes. Later there was something in the air! I was about to have my worst thoughts and suddenly I couldn’t remove them. A cold distant feeling came over me has my wife slept, my mind ticking over had I done the right thing, was moving to Istanbul the right thing. England was my home for 43 years I was struggling to forget it, I was screaming for a conversation in English with my friends , I was missing my colleagues , I was missing the banter in fact for the time I was really missing my home country.
Regardless of my disillusions of England I was sitting there ready to fly back ,credit card in hand and searching for flights but then I suddenly remembered why I came here to Istanbul. To be with my wife, all that we went through in the last twelve months before we got married, all the preparations, the endless £200 per month phone bills when we were apart. Throughout we kept in touch at every free moment. Simply I couldn’t bear the distance of being apart again. But finally I understood why I was really here not because Istanbul is historic, beautiful and thriving, it was to be with my wife. It could be anywhere in the world just right now it happens to be Istanbul. Later that week my mother-in law came to stay and totally brushed away any disillusioned thoughts that I had earlier in the week. Sitting there with my wife and her mother fluently flowing in their native Turkish tongue was a blessing and a joy to be heard, and another reminder of why I chose to come here.
Perhaps you were expecting a song by Phil Collins sadly I am not a musician I’m just a guy writing his thoughts.
