1. Back in the summer I worked at KEMA in a with two guys, Aaron and Isaac. One day the topic of Turkey had come up and Aaron mentioned that he had a Turkish roommate. I was curious what her name was and where in Turkey she was from. He more or less supplied that information and I had all but forgotten about her a few days later. This was in early July. Fast-forward to my flight to Turkey the other day. I was with a friend, Leon, about to board the plane in Boston when he saw his friend, Selin. I was introduced and we began talking. My seat was very near Selin's on the plane and so we asked someone to switch with me, which the man happily agreed, for, for him it was a switch from a middle seat to an aisle seat. By the way, did you notice the use of "for, for"? I thought it was brilliant. Anyway Selin and I were talking a lot when I pulled out a notebook on which to write that happened to be an old KEMA notepad. She saw the logo and asked about it. I told her I had worked there the summer and then she gasped. After a few moments of being stunned and me really getting curious, she said "you know my roomate".
2. Pınar and I went out for dinner together in the part of İstanbul called Taksim, which is everybody's favorite place. We had a big dinner and then went looking for a place to sit and get a drink. The problem was that in Taksim there are like 1,000 places to do this. So we wandered and wandered. Too crowded, too many old people, too expensive, too loud, too sketchy looking, too close to the sketchy looking place... We thought of every excuse not to enter one place or another. After wandering for a long while Pınar stopped in front of a place we had passed previously. A man was already ushering us to sit down at a small outside table. Most of the places we went were so crowded that one had to sit outside. Anyway I figured that after a beer I might not mind the cold so much. We sat down and each got a beer. I got a large, which turned out to be huge, and Pınar got a small, which turned out to be large.
Sitting hunched over the table, we had barely spoken two or three sentences and taken two or three sips when suddenly I heard my name. "JEREMY!" Not to brag, but I am used to this thing back in the Worcester/Boston area, because I know enough people randomly that I sometimes run into them in strange places. But in İstanbul I stop wondering if I will run into someone unexpectedly because there are 10 people in İstanbul that I know and 11 million people I don't know. The odds of seeing one of them on the street is literally one-in-a-million.
When I looked up, I did not see a Turk. Instead I saw Isaac from KEMA. He stood there smiling. I jumped to my feet to shake his hand and asked the predictable question "What the hell are you doing here?!?" He was vacationing for a few days in İstanbul with his brother and parents. They had arrived in İstanbul just a day or two before. He told me that he was in large part inspired to visit Turkey because of me and another friend of his. Sure I mentioned Turkey when we were chatting at work and spoke highly of it, but I didn't think he would visit anytime soon. As amazed as I was to see him, I could only wonder what his amazement was like. To meet someone who is more or less obsessed with a far away place and then to have a chance encounter with that person in that far away place... He must think I live here or run the city or something.
Well, I am sorry, but in my dazed state, I did not think to take a picture. I will try to pull the camera out a bit more in the next few days. Tonight, I might see Isaac again. Tomorrow, I will see Misa again. This trip is about to get out of the introduction and enter chapter one.
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