I didn’t know I could drive like a cabbie

It’s been four months since I moved back to Istanbul from Glen Ridge, a quiet suburb in Garden State (New Jersey), and three months since I started transporting myself and my daughter in my 10-year-old white sedan that still has a Garden State license plate in my new – and old – city.

 

I lived the first 20 years of my life in Türkiye and the other twenty years in the United States, if we round down the years. Like most people, as I got older, I acquired whatever skills I needed to live. Driving – like cycling – came into my life in the second half. With the limited public transportation and dispersed habitation, it is impossible to live in the United States without a car, unless you live in Manhattan. Then you have to plan your trips outside of the city meticulously, using the bus or train – or a combination of the two.

 

My first car was an old gray Ford that was so patient with me. It never broke, even when I accidently pushed contradicting buttons and levers at the same time. You might think Come on. You have only a brake, accelerator and shifts to play with, but believe me, in a panic I could be very creative about applying them.

 

My second car was a red Pontiac that was certainly an eye-catcher for police officers to pull me over. I didn’t treat it the way I did my first car, since I was a more seasoned driver by then, but I was responsible for the time its engine exploded in the middle of a busy Manhattan Street.

 

My third and current car is a white BMW. I love driving her. I love listening to music with my daughter on our road trips, warming myself when it’s freezing outside or cooling when it’s hot. Since I learned how to treat a car already, I take care of her. Yes, it is her. She doesn’t have a name though. I don’t skip her maintenance. I pay attention to the sounds she makes. I google the errors or warnings her dashboard screams and discuss probable causes with the mechanics I take her to in order to uncover the root cause of whatever is happening to her and explore the options for fixing her. When I was living in my old country, I used to vacuum and wash her myself. Ok, I have to admit that it was not that often but good enough.

 

She has two bumps on her backside that I didn’t fix. The first one was not me. She was in the parking lot of a grocery store a couple of days after I got her. The deep scratch was at the level of a shopping cart but relatively minor, and so I decided not to fix it. The second one was more recent. After a canoe ride in a tranquil lake, I was about to hit the road and backing her up and didn’t see the pole behind her. I must still have been in the mode of canoe riding where no pole exists in a lake. The damage was much bigger than the first one but still isolated and relatively minor, so I didn’t fix it either.

 

During the preparation of my move to Istanbul, she was the main item to decide to stay or come with me. The regulations were not on my side, but I was able to take her for two years only and drive her with her current plate – from the Garden State. After two years, she will either go back to the United States or I will pay the hefty taxes and fees to keep her here.

 

After spending a month in a dark container with our boxes on a ship, she arrived at the port in Istanbul at the end of January. The paperwork took about a week. It was February 6 when I was supposed to pick her up. I woke up around 5 a.m. and saw messages in my family’s group chat on WhatsApp about the earthquakes that struck southern and central Türkiye. My aunts and cousins, in shock, were waiting in the street for nothing – else – to happen.

 

I checked the news. Media outlets weren’t counting the number of deaths yet but they were showing footage of the massive damage the earthquake created.

 

I got another message from my daughter’s school, which was closed due to the national emergency. It was supposed to be her first day, fully immersed in a language she never chose to use to express herself -yet. She had only ever lived in the U.S.

 

By that time, it was already 6 a.m. I knew I had to leave home soon to go to the port to pick up my car, though I was not sure whether my appointment was still on, but there was no way for me to check that so early.

 

Now with my daughter by my side, I called a cab to pick us up. The cab arrived at my new address in Beykoz in the Asian side of Istanbul. We both got in, but the ride lasted only ten minutes. The cab broke down just as we were about to cross the bridge from Asia to Europe.  We sat in the dark. The sky didn’t give any clue of the rising sun yet. Our only source of light was the fleeting headlights of other cars passing us.

 

We waited for another cab. It took us to the main transportation hub, Zincirlikuyu in the European side of Istanbul, then we transferred to a bus. The bus ride to Beylikdüzü took about an hour with other passengers who were going to work with or without knowing what happened in the southern and central part of the country just a couple of hours ago. They were strangers to each other, so nobody said much to each other on the bus. The still sleepy darkness of the winter day must have been another factor to that.

 

After the bus ride, we got another cab to the port. When we arrived for our appointment a bit early, nobody was there. The electricity was cut off. A security guard suggested that we wait in the cafeteria, where we could get only water, as there was no electricity to heat it for tea. So, we waited. We drew doodles and took pictures of our doodles. I read the news about the earthquakes until the person I was supposed to meet to get my car arrived.

 

Because of the earthquakes, all the arrangements we made to get the car from customs were canceled. People who were supposed to do those transactions were already gone to their hometowns to help earthquake victims. Unlike transient cities in the world, people who move to Istanbul don’t move back or relocate, they just stay, which is reflected in the city’s population and the growth of new neighborhoods.

 

After making new arrangements, my daughter and I waited a while longer. We watched the rain start falling. The lights finally flickered on, and we ordered tea. The rain got heavier, and as we sipped our tea, it was pouring cats and dogs.

 

I felt the tannins on my teeth as I scrolled through more news about the earthquakes on my phone on low batter mode, I didn’t want to run out of its battery before getting home. After two hours of waiting, the man overseeing the shipment of my car asked us to move to another location within walking distance outside the building and hop on the truck that would transport my car outside of the port.

 

In a second, my daughter and I were drenched with rain. She didn’t complain. We met the man who gave me the instruction. He had the keys to my car but we still had to wait longer. He asked the security officer who was in his tiny office, warm and dry around the corner, if we could wait inside. His office was built to hold just one person, but when he saw my daughter and me, he said, ‘Of course.’

 

As the security guard moved out of the way so my daughter and I could get into his office, I didn’t know where he headed in the rain though, he told us that we should drink tea. The water in his teapot was boiling on top of a burner that was red from heat. My daughter and I were so pleased with his gesture that we smiled so hard we actually started laughing. We pretended that we were security officers, poured tea for each other and watched the rain. I felt pain in my chest when I thought about the earthquake victims. I hoped that the rain was isolated in Istanbul. Before our pants got dry, the truck came. We sat in the front seat, drenched again from a minute walk. After a ten-minute ride, my car was on the road with the engine working. I was told that she hadn’t started earlier and they had to kick-start her, so the engine was on to recharge. I recorded how she got free, every second in the rain. I didn’t mind, I was happy.

 

It cost me a lot to bring her to Istanbul. I was not sure if it was worth it until I got in. My daughter started playing music from our playlist we used to listen to in our old country, when everything was familiar and we were surrounded by cars with Garden State plates.

 

We started the Google map en route to our new address on my phone, where our old address was still tagged as ‘home’. My phone had 20% of battery left. Since the battery of the car was being recharged, I figured that I should not have connected my phone to the car. 20% had to be enough to take us home.

 

It felt strange to drive in Istanbul for the first time in my old car. I was not familiar with any of the roads, so I followed the GPS. We were about to enter a paid highway for which I hoped that there would be a cash gate, but there was none. Moments later, I saw a sign explaining the penalty for unpaid rides. As I continued to drive, I accidently passed the station to get a pass.

 

Without stopping anywhere, my daughter and I finally made it to our new address and parked the car in the parking lot. I had to get something from the trunk and attempted to restart her to no avail. She didn’t start. I called my brother to come and help me, as I had no patience left to deal with that. Luckily, I had my brother in the same country, in the same city to be able to ask for help. The mechanic he brought told us that the battery was disconnected on purpose when my car was shipped in the United States. If it were not, it might have been malfunctioning due to a month-long transfer over cold oceans. That is why she didn’t start at the port either. I realized that if I had stopped on the way to get the highway pass, she wouldn’t have started there either. Thankfully nothing too terrible was wrong with her.

 

I considered myself an okay driver in the United States but not anything like a driver in Istanbul. Now I had to learn quickly to drive like a cabbie. I think every driver in Istanbul has to drive like a cab driver – without hesitation or fear. They have no shyness about moving lanes or climbing steep hills. Thanks to the topology of the area where I live now in Türkiye, steep hills are as abundant as traffic lights. There is still one in Kavacik which I haven’t dared climbing yet. I found a way around which is good for me until I get more comfortable driving like a cabbie.

 

Since the day I picked up my car, she bridged my old to new life. She brought familiarity to us, a smile to my daughter’s and relief to me. A reminiscence of old days with new memories. We see different scenery from her windows for sure, but it is nice to hold something familiar as well. Even my mother, who’s never lived outside Türkiye, says whenever she rides with us, she feels like she’s in the United States remembering our rides together there. Then she looks outside. It is actually Istanbul.

Eda Uzuncakara

IG: eda.u.kara

sparksinshadows@gmail.com