Let's start with the TL 1.50 driver. Recently, the Kadıköy authorities decided to move the famous Salı Pazarı (Tuesday Market) from its central and easy-to-get-to location to somewhere in the vicinity of the Fenerbahçe soccer stadium. That was probably a sensible move in light of the traffic congestion and general mayhem it caused on a regular basis. Whether it was as wise to decide to move it again, this time to Hasanpaşa, I leave you to decide. All I know is that the market is now considerably more difficult to get to unless you happen to live in Hasanpaşa. There's a free bus to convey shoppers to the new location from Fenerbahçe, but to take advantage of it you have to be prepared to stand in line in the blazing sun for a very long time. So, like many other would-be bargain-hunters I was more than happy when a normal taxi drove past indicating that it was offering dolmuş service.You would think, wouldn't you, that the driver might first have found out where the market was, but ours appeared to have no idea, which meant that he missed the turn-off when we came to it. Never mind -- he just slammed on the brakes, skidded across the hatching on the road indicating that he should keep out and sped on. Next we came to a stationary queue of traffic. There was a line of cones to the left of it with just enough space for a taxi to squeeze between them and the queue -- until the cones turned sharp right whereupon our driver couldn't think quickly enough what to do and so careened straight through them.
On another occasion, I paid TL 2 to a dolmuş driver to carry me from Kanlıca to Beylerbeyi. The man drove like a lunatic, speeding along a narrow road full of bends and curves while simultaneously trying to count his takings, regardless of the fact that there were pedestrians walking in the road and potential obstacles around every corner. I could hardly believe I was still in one piece when we finally reached Beylerbeyi.
As for the man who valued my life at TL 30, he was a bus driver from Darende near Malatya, who spent a solid 45 minutes of the journey back to Malatya alternately talking and texting, talking and texting on his two mobile phones. We were lucky if he had one hand on the wheel, let alone two. There was a problem with a driver for the onward connection, I learned, but why he couldn't have passed that message on to someone at base to deal with is beyond me.
Guys, there are hands-free headsets. There are Bluetooth telephone devices. If I had my way, the police would be entitled to confiscate on the spot the license of any driver of public transport caught using a mobile phone while driving. It's my life, and I'd rather hang on to it for a bit longer, thank you very much.
Charlotte McPherson is away. Pat Yale lives in a restored cave-house in Göreme in Cappadocia.
