The most outrageous example of this as far as I'm concerned involved an acquaintance made somewhat reluctantly on İstanbul's grungy suburban train line that rumbles out from Haydarpaşa to Gebze. It was the first time I'd ever taken this train, and somehow I wound up sitting opposite a couple who certainly didn't believe in keeping a low profile. He had his hair tied back in a long ponytail, she had the manner of -- well, let's just say a woman who's no better than she should be. Of course nothing would do but that they engaged me in conversation while I kept glancing anxiously round at my stony-faced fellow passengers, wishing that I could wave a wand and vanquish them.Now, what was the likelihood that I would ever see either of those people again? Then, a few years later, I was in İzmit waiting to board a bus to Hereke. As the door opened, I climbed in, fiddling with my mobile phone and hardly noticing as the driver cleared a space for me on the seat beside him. Then I looked round, and it was the exact same man with the ponytail, beaming all over his face and asking: “Don't you remember me? With the woman?”
How could I possibly forget, and by the end of the journey, needless to say, I'd forgiven him my previous embarrassment and was promising to come and meet his Black Sea family whenever our paths should cross for the third time (which they almost certainly will do…).
So really I shouldn't have been so surprised when I rounded a corner outside the Grand Bazaar last week and came face to face with a Göremeli. He was slumped at a table and looked as if he could do with a good night's sleep. There followed exclamations of surprise and delight. Then nothing would do but we sit down and catch up on each other's news. Business? So-so. Friends? Hardly seen. The balloons following this year's dreadful accident? And suddenly the conversation took legs and was running.
“So noisy. Some days there are 70 of them up there now.”
Seventy? Some exaggeration, surely. But I was interested in what he said about the noise because really this has become one of the banes of Göreme life, lovely for the visitors but an increasing problem for us residents who must endure the drone of the balloons inflating at 4:30 a.m., then the intermittent whoosh of the burners being fired up from 5:30 a.m. onwards.
But that's just the start of it, we agreed, because then comes the first call to prayer and then, at the stroke of 8 a.m. the builders start work with their chipping and drilling and myriad other disturbances.
“And now we have the rubbish trucks going round at 1 a.m.,” my friend groaned. We sounded like a pair of old fogies, but really we were just mourning the wonderful peace of Göreme that we'd both once so cherished.
Pat Yale lives in a restored cave-house in Göreme in Cappadocia.
