On Meeting Izet.


Izet was a short haired nervous wreck. Sitting in his small restaurant with very little customers on this Sunday of Ramadan night. It was the closest thing to home cooked meal we had had yet in Istanbul, look like leftovers on the counter, it was 7 lira so we said yes, with hope that it would be all right. It was a delicious meal of green beans, eggplant wrapped around meat balls and lots and lots of what the is already on every plate, bitter yogurt.
Sitting in the table at the corner, the speaker was at our ear. The music that was being played caught our attention, and as the night went on and the restaurant emptied it was just Izet and us. As Lizzie was coming back from the bathroom they stuck up a conversation, Izet joyful to hear that someone was interested in his music. Ginny and I soon joined in the Raki came out as he played for us everything from strange disco-Turkish music to gypsy and Jewish music. He had it all on his small dell laptop. Each song he played seemed to erect a different emotion from him. The most charming when any song came on about love. His eyes would tear and his voice rise, describing the inner meanings of this song and how it is singing about love. “love is like an ocean, and I’m the boat to cross,” he would describe. “I Just love love.”--”I give too much love, it never comes back to me.” His story continued to get sadder in between his large gulps of Raki, and trying to guess Ginny’s and Lizzie’s ethnicities.
“you must be Ukrainian, no no, gypsy, no Ukrainian.” Izet was wholesome his story very bleak coming from Sivas, a rural north east town in Turkey, he had seemed to be everywhere and had reasonably good English. “I’ve tried to get many jobs but none work.” Izet attempting to finish university he never did, very impressed by the fact that we go to Boğaziçi, he always had dreamed of going there. He even knew of Seattle because of his training in Microsoft programming, more importantly though because of “Two things: one, Kurt Cobaine and two, the protest where everyone
said no to that big group…. The WTO.” He shock my hand vigorously afterwards, smiling about the protest. Soon going back into his story, He never seemed to get him a job. Stumbling from one thing to a next, he found his way to his job at the café we are at, because of a failed trip to work in Russia.
“I wanted to go work in Russia, because the girls, they are strong. Tukish girls will sleep with you and say they did not. But Russia girls they are strong.” It seemed all was set for this stocky eastern Turkish to immigrate to Russia intill he was at the airport. No inusurence and assistance once he was there he was not able to go. Leaving him nowhere, after he had been kicked out of his house in Sivas.
“After crying three hours, and smoking many packs of cigarettes. I ended up here through a friend who needed me to work at her shop. This shop is my home, we are not suppose to be open but I have no where else but here, this is my home… but don’t worry the food was cooked by women.” Izet and us continued our talk in till it was time to head home it was a Sunday night after all, our adventure through Taksim proved to be a gain overall. After him letting us pay what we could, we left his small café, the name still never given, he gave us a tour of Taksim. Taksim which as it turned out we were not in earlier that night, was the most bustling of Turkish night life. Bars and Discos everywhere, Izet even pointing out the bars he liked, where we can hear live music.
As we ushered him to guide us home he did, The hustling of rides from Taxis was everywhere, tyring to figure out the mini buses(small buses which run later into the night) and the big metro buses. He rushes to the kiosk and points at a bus leaving, we hope on soon discovering that he put us on the wrong bus. We hoped off and got a cab, which in Istanbul is one hell of a ride home.
Izet’s was only the beginning I feel like. He is a metaphor of the idiosyncrasies that line and pave the streets of this city. A city I cant even comprehend….yet. It is gigantic. I miss home slightly, places I know. I hope it comes.