Nothing unusual about that in this city. Then I got confused when certain buildings that usually appear to the right of the access road stood off to the left.As we passed behind the Turkish Airlines (THY) administration building I knew for sure that we were driving on an entirely new road. The city is really on top of development, for workers had already planted ornate floral displays on the traffic islands and abutting slopes, some with only soil to mark the design. The sight inspired me to imagine a floral outline of the “tuğra” of Sultan Süleyman the Magnificent, the most elaborate of official Ottoman signatures.
My Havaş bus -- free for journalists with a press card -- took the new exit for the airport and I saw a new complex on the city side of the road there, between the big Shell station and the CNR Expo Center. The sign said İstanbul Fuar Merkezi, or fair center, and I wondered what would possess anyone to build an exhibition hall next to an existing one. Then I recalled some trouble between the İstanbul Chamber of Commerce (İTO) and its partners in CNR, thought there must be some behind the scenes effort to make trouble.
That’s what the big bosses say when they fire you: It’s nothing personal, just business. Speaking of bosses, Chicago bootlegger and gangster Al Capone had a bulletproof limousine, but the Feds got him with paper bullets, nailing him for tax evasion.
The crime boss brings me to President Franklin D. Roosevelt, whose White House staff referred to him by a common nickname, the Boss. FDR had a limousine, too, a big fat Lincoln. However, following the attack on Pearl Harbor, with the United States at war, his Secret Service agents worried that that his non-bulletproof limousine did not provide enough protection for their commander-in-chief.
One agent recalled that the Treasury Department had an armored limo sitting in a parking lot nearby, the 1928 Cadillac that had belonged to Al Capone and that had been seized with all his other property. The big car had been painted green and black to look like a Chicago police car, and that beastly car carried the president to the Capitol, where he told Congress that Dec. 7 was a day that would live in infamy. When told whose car he was riding in, FDR said, “I hope Mr. Capone won’t mind.”
You see, it was nothing personal. A couple of years later the US was in the midst of World War II and Roosevelt summoned his top speechwriter, Robert Sherwood, to help him prepare one of his important wartime addresses. Sherwood found the president in his library, windows open to the soft spring weather, carefully signing his name in book after book. FDR said he was tired of loaning books out to people who forgot to return them. Sherwood asked if he really thought people were more likely to return books that bore the president’s signature, but Roosevelt kept signing.
I got a touch of spring at the airport, too: Three small almond trees in front of the domestic terminal sported white blossoms, the first evidence for this city dweller that the mild weather so far this winter is affecting the plant life. I can’t say much about global warming, but we do have İstanbul warming.
In order to enter the airport I had to remove my jacket, keys, cell phone and any other bits of metal from my pockets, and also take off my belt. I thought they might have given up on that one by now, but no, I had to do it.
Fortunately my pants fit properly, but nonetheless the scanner buzzed as I walked through, and again when the security guard asked me to pass through once more. As the man frisked me with his electronic wand he kindly asked me not to worry, and said it was nothing personal.
