turkish bus

I was on the mend, but still plenty sick. The retching, shitting and delirium that was full-blown days before, had settled into something like a light barbiturate buzz, adding a dreaminess to the crazy sights and sounds all around me. Crazy sights like a legless man pushing himself on a cart and begging in the Grand Bazaar of Istanbul. Crazy sounds like the calls to prayer echoing through ancient streets on which trash fires burned and poor people lived cheek to jowl. Just plain crazy, like the dusty lot where buses parked all catawampus and where passengers traveled with their livestock.

I rode one of those busses along with my travel buddy, who, having arranged the bus journey, was saving my sick ass. She did this way before cell phone and internet conveniences. She succeeded with next to no Turkish language skills. She battled patriarchal resistance. Critically, she secured cheap fare from Istanbul to Budapest — essential for lean travelers like us. She’d even checked with the US Embassy in Istanbul, since our route took us through then, Yugoslavia, and the war was on. The Embassy cleared us to pass through what is now Serbia.

The bus was filled mostly with Turkish men, women, children, and few chickens. My buddy and I represented the US in a small gathering of internationals that gravitated to a spot on the bus. Our travel mates were: Three Tunisians, a father, his son and his daughter in-law. Two young men from Senegal. And, a rather odd couple, a French man and a Saudi woman. The shared language in our group was French and everybody spoke it except me. Again, my buddy, now interpreter, was saving my ass.

Thrust together and chatty as we were, our crew got pretty tight on the roughly four-hour journey from Istanbul to the Turkish and Bulgarian border. Once we arrived there, our good time ended.

On the Turkish side of the border, soldiers came on board to check passports. We Americans were of little interest to the soldiers. The same seemed true for the French guy. His Saudi companion caused the soldiers to raise their eyebrows, but the French guy spoke Turkish — that, and his Frenchness, earned the Saudi woman a pass.

Then, the tone changed. The soldiers became aggressive when dealing with the Tunisians. They claimed some ludicrous exit fee was required. It was clearly a shakedown. The Tunisians knew the drill, and they coughed up the fee.

With the young Senegalese men, the soldiers were ruder still; glaring, shouting and demanding fees. The soldiers carried military weapons. They didn’t directly threaten with those weapons — they didn’t have to. We all knew that, in the wee hours of the morning, at a desolate border crossing, and at the whim of corrupt soldiers, we were fucked.

The Senegalese men understood their precariousness. They coughed up as well, seemingly every penny, lira, or franc they had. Throughout the shakedown, they’d endured the soldier’s intensity with great dignity; neither aggressive in their responses nor beaten in spirit. Stoic, I guess. Admirable, for sure.

With their shakedowns complete, the Turkish soldiers got off the bus, chatting up the bus drivers like old buddies, not even trying to disguise their filthy racket. The bus shuddered to life and rumbled at a snail’s pace

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across the short distance between Turkish razor wire and Bulgarian razor wire.

Under klieg lights on the Bulgarian side, Bulgarian soldiers got on board. They were armed just like the Turks and were even more surly. Unbelievably, another shakedown began anew. It was mostly the same:
• US and France, you’re off the hook.
• Saudi women, your French guy is protecting you.
• Tunisians, it’s time for you to line our pockets.
• Pockets were lined by resigned Tunisians.

Then, the Bulgarian shakedown changed.

Broke (thanks to Turkish soldiers), young (maybe a factor), dark skinned (likely a factor, I thought), and coming from a place that lacked the diplomatic reach of the US or France (perhaps) — there was nothing about the Senegalese that the Bulgarians accepted, so the Bulgarians kicked them off the bus.

When I realized what was happening, I starting mouthing off. Loud, indignant stuff in English like, “this is bullshit, what the fuck is going on.” Soldiers spun around to look at me, the barrels of the machine guns strapped to their chests, passing our heads as they turned. The Frenchman shushed me with a small hand gesture and a look that said, “Are you mad? Piss these guys off and you’re fucked too.”

The soldiers led the Senegalese men down the bus aisle, while our crew convened an emergency meeting in hushed French. The Frenchman suggested that money was the only thing that would get the Senegalese out of their predicament. We all discretely peeled off the hard currency we could spare — francs and dollars in this pre-Euro story. I was appointed the deliverer. There wasn’t much time to spare. We could see that the bus drivers had found the Senegalese men’s bags in the bus bins and were tossing them out on the tarmac.

I bounded down the bus aisle with a wad of cash rolled up in my hand. I was too fast for the bus driver, he could only shout as I cleared the door, shouting back some nonsense in English about saying goodbye to my buddies. On the Tarmac, I beelined straight for one of the Senegalese men, awkwardly holding out my arm as if to shake, only with a closed fist hiding the cash.

The man accepted my clumsy shake and I looked into his face — his dignified, stoic face. With hands joined, I opened my fist and acknowledgment glimmered in his eyes. His hand scooped up the bills and his stoicism faltered. Tears streamed down his cheeks. I’d just seen him endure mistreatment like he knew it all too well. Now, I knew that he hadn’t hardened his heart to kindness.

His one word to me was, "merci." It was all that he had time to say and nearly all that I was capable of understanding.

Now the bus driver was really shouting at me. I ran across the tarmac and hustled down the bus aisle to my seat. I leaned over my buddy as we looked out the window. The Senegalese men were in silhouette with klieg lights behind them. So too were soldiers further behind. The last we saw, a belch of smoke from the bus turned into rays in the klieg lights. The cherries from the soldier’s cigarettes glowed against their darkened forms. And in the center was the shadowy shape of two African men whose fate I would never know.

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