Three Days in Istanbul Following Wally

We were inert, struck immobile by our lack of vitality, too sweaty, too naked and too exhausted to move.  It was the third day of following Wally when we ended up in a hamami wearing nothing but thin strips of cloth around our loins like Neanderthals with a J.C. Penney credit card.  I lay on the solid marble slab facing away from my friend Kevin, and from Wally who was hard to describe as a friend, nor was he anything less or more. 

"Ohhhhhh, Jesus Christ," moans echoed across the white chamber, reverberating for longer than necessary because the cries had no escape from the hot room, just as we felt we had none either.

I was not about to turn and see who it was because turning meant scalding myself anew on the marble slab that was cooking our bodies like a convection oven.  Our nakedness was protected by another bed sheet cut into slightly larger strips like a beach towel and laid out between us and the solid stone platform.  Steam was rising, I think, but perhaps it was a vapor trail that often accompanies dementia or extreme pain and begins to form itself into hallucinations.  The delusions of steam seemed to form a belly dancer that made erotic thrusts with her hips and was last seen snaking her way to the glass ceiling cells that heated the room and our bodies, broiling our minds well past done.  None of this has made much sense to me either and I have never been sure of exactly what went on just before or after that Turkish bath although I suspected we had eaten food laced with something. 

"Ohhhhh...Oh...Oh...OW!"  It was Kevin.  I hadn't heard the bath master, or so we had named him while he was out of the room, come in and start to work on Kevin with a deep muscle massage.  I feared my approaching turn and would have been in a near panic if the weight of the air hadn't kept me from breathing heavy or quickly as it pressed against my chest.  "Ouch, son of a ouch, oh God Jesus Christ."

"Here it's Allah, you know.  Keep praying to Jesus and they might just give it to you harder," Wally said, showing no signs of nervousness while he waited for his turn.  It was hard to be sure but I think he was meditating; arms folded one over the other and resting on his abdomen just below his belly button.

"Shut up Wally you...Ow...oh," he couldnt even finish, the mans thick fingers pressing up and over Kevins calf muscles and working out a knot that may have been there for years from the way Kevin protested its removal.

Kevin and I were pawns in Wallys game of Chutes and Ladders.  One minute we were unwittingly high on something like an opiate and the next minute sitting in a literal sweatbox praying for the relief and relatively cooler temperatures of an athletic club sauna.  Wally always kept us guessing.  It was the first time I had ever traveled out of the country and it was Kevins first time as well.  I'm not sure why either of us agreed to go with Wally, at least to Turkey of all places, when we hadnt been anywhere else in the world first.  But he had worked on us for weeks romanticizing it all and eventually we caved.

About three months before we found ourselves getting pummeled unmercifully by a man with a broad, dark moustache, we were sitting in Kevins cubicle in one of Atlantas downtown high rise buildings.  It was a window cube and across the way you could see another set of windows in a bland office building; the same view in pretty much all directions.  I was looking out into the grayness of the afternoon, counting windows while Kevin spouted endless sales figures for the latest product launch we had conducted on behalf of one of our clients.  I sat on the corner of his desk, he sat lounging in the chair and neither of us saw Wally peak his head over the low cube wall.

"What are you turds doing?" he asked without expecting answer.  He picked up the Koosh ball from the shelf nearby and tossed it back and forth, one hand to the other as he continued.  "You know, all that sales mumbo jumbo doesnt mean shit.  You know its going to take time before they start to see any results.  So why even mess with it.  Thats why I say we take a vacation, by the time we come back, the product will be doing well and well look like heroes for being able to sit back and wait for the success we predicted based on our initial launch.  What do you say guys?"

"In our original estimation, the sales were supposed to spike initially, drop off some and begin to maintain right away, and according to this, we arent even seeing the beginning of that model so I think we need to do something rather than run off to God knows where."  Kevin liked Wally, but always felt as though he did all the work while Wally scored the accolades.  Kevin was balding on top and often blamed Wally's hitch-and-go approach for contributing to his stress fallout.  Wally's response was to ask him why it didn't come out at work then instead of clogging his shower every morning, but that usually just made Kevin more upset.  Kevin was red-faced naturally; his skin a pinkish tone and turned red when his emotions ran amok in any direction.  He looked flushed the same when a girl walked by as when he was constipated.  His nose was sharp and long so he often wore glasses to distract from them which made him look bookish.  Kevin's fingers were long as well and he pointed his crooked index finger at Wally.  "Can you hang out while we go over this?  You need to hear this too."

"You know the numbers are blah-blah-blah-blah-blah...just put it down for a minute and hear me out.  Ive got an idea for a great trip and you two are going with me." 

I turned back from the window to look at Wally who was still throwing the Koosh back and forth without even looking down.  He was a round faced guy, just the opposite of Kevin in so many ways.  He had a pot belly from too much beer in college, which he referred to as his pony, as in "pony-keg of beer," which rested on top of his tree-trunk legs.  He wore his hair longer than most of the men in the office.  It was thick and wavy and it smoothed the edges of his face which would have looked like the classic smiley face symbol if the brown tufts didn't drift down over the tops of his ears.  The comparison still worked though because he always had a goofy smile smeared across his lips.  He was smiling at me when my eyes adjusted from the gray afternoon light to the harsh glow of fluorescent bulbs behind frosted plastic.

"Okay, where?" I asked.  It hadn't occurred to me that we were being asked to go but told.

"Not just where Bean, but who, what, why and when."  He called me by my nick-name as did most people and when we got down to it, I guess I preferred it to my given name, Lawrence Landon Beaumont.  Bean came from my initials, L.L.B., as in L.L. Bean.  It was reflective of my shape as well, big chest, big hips and medium sized waist, sort of like a peanut or a bean or some other odd legume. "I'm talking about an adventure, hostels, dive restaurants, forbidden women, street meat, fez hats and who knows what else."

"So where?"  Kevin and I both asked in unison.

Keep an open mind now Wally paused.

"WHERE?" we both asked again.

"Turkey."

"As in the Turks, Turkey?"

"No, the freakin sandwich meat yes the Turks, Turkey.  Istanbul, Cappadoccia, Angora, Bodrum, and Ephesus.  It will be great." 

"Why not some place like Paris or Rome?" I asked. 

"Because you can go there any time.  Don't you think it will be easy once you are married to say, honey, lets go to Paris' versus honey, how about a romantic vacation in Turkey, oh and youll have to keep your face covered part of the time so we dont get ourselves stoned."

"Do they really do that?" I responded with an inquisitive eyebrow wrinkling against my forehead.

"Probably not, but that isn't the point here, you can always do the easy trips, but you have to experience things like this with an adventurous spirit and we all know that begins to atrophy as you get older."  Wally was well-traveled and had been to many of the big countries in the world:  the U.K., France, Italy, Switzerland, Holland, Australia, New Zealand, Costa Rica, Belize, Chile, Argentina, Brazil and the list goes on.  In each he forged away from the beaten path leaving little trace of where he had been so others could not follow.  There were pictures of him in front of jungle waterfalls where he had camped for days without seeing another soul.  He was particularly proud of one where he posed with a boa constrictor around his neck like a harlot posed with a feather one.  He had pictures of himself doing wild things, and unique things.  On his wall at home he had enlarged a photo of himself holding a giant catfish which he had caught the way some backwoods people do in Mississippi by sticking their arm down its throat when it swims by and lifting it out of the water.  The fish's mouth gripped his sleeveless arm just past his elbow.  In some he is shown in midair jumping from a bridge outside of Christchurch; others in an opium den in Vietnam with several women of questionable intentions.  His promise of adventure, we knew, was not an empty one but we were not as sure of ourselves as he was of himself.

In time, Wally's constant discussion about the trip wore us down.  "I knew you guys would come around, he said on the plane.  You see, I just never let myself believe that I was going to be doing this one alone and talked about it with you as if we were planning it together."

"But we didnt plan it together," Kevin pointed out.

"Hell boys, we didnt plan it all!"  Wally seemed pretty pleased with himself.  He looked as though he had just told us about sex for the first time and was sure we were going to find a flight attendant and try it out before the plane landed.

"When you say we didnt plan it at all, you mean me and Bean right?  You did plan it."

"No Kev, there is no plan.  Well find a place to stay when we get there."

"What if its all booked up?" I asked, a slight edge of panic in my voice.

"The entire country?  Doubtful.  If we dont find something in Istanbul, well just move away from the city until we do.  No big deal.  Or we just wont sleep at all."

"You mean we don't have reservations the entire time we are gonna be there?  The whole freaking two weeks?"  Kevin was alarmed and I appreciated the fact that I was not alone in my fear.

"Don't be such a tourist man, be a traveler.  Go where your travel leads you and not where you believe you should go before you get there.  How would you know where to stay if you've never been there?"

I cleared my throat and stepped in.  "Well for one thing, they have a Ritz in Istanbul.  We could stay there and know well be getting a good hotel." 

"That isn't a good hotel, Bean, its an American hotel just located on foreign soil.  It is fine for that kind of trip but we are here to experience the world, feel the culture and get a sense of how they live.  If you stay in a place like that, you wont even have left the U.S.  Thats like thinking that Cancun is part of Mexico when its really just U.S.A South.  Besides you shouldnt worry, there probably wont be any rats or roaches where we end up.  At least they wont bother us."  Wally's eyes glazed over like two chocolate filled Krispy Kremes.  He was enamored with the counter idea that we even could come across rats or roaches.

"Probably?... Won't bother us?  I dont want to have to wait and see on that," I whined.

"Neither do I," Kevin seconded.

Wally breathed deeply, and with a Zen-like calm said, "Relax boys, just relax."  And a second later we heard his breathing become long and deep.  He was asleep as fast as that and left us to worry about rats.

He didn't wake up until the plane touched ground in Istanbul and later it seemed as though he hadnt slept since.  Kevin and I spent three full days in Istanbul following Wally. 

We spent most of the entire first day at Topkapi Palace, the ancestral home of the Sultan's of the Turkish Empire.  There were plenty of people milling around, snapping pictures, ogling the ancient designs and playing tourist, which Kevin and I both found to be a great comfort.  Later that afternoon, Kevin found a small window that lead to the top of the Harem in the palace.  It was a place he had seen in a movie but was restricted.  We found ourselves on the roof watching the sunset.

Things began to get even more sketch that night when Wally led us down a dark alley towards the Bosphorous Strait to a small wharf that reeked of dead fish, heavy, unfiltered cigarette smoke and diesel fuel.  Despite the malodorous winds of dead fish, we suffered them more easily than we did the potentially fatal combination of cigarettes and fuel.  Thick wooden pylons held the floating docks in place as they rippled languidly with the tides; the boats rising and falling alongside the docks.

"How about a cruise?" Wally asked in English to a man in a black cap and clothes stained with fish guts (or what I supposed were fish guts).  His eyes were black and shadowed beneath course eyebrows and I might not have seen him at all if he didnt have slightly less swarthy skin than some of his fellow countrymen.  He would have vanished into the night if the moon hadn't reflected off his leathery face. 

The man didnt respond.

"Take us across the Bosphorous?" Wally asked again.

"Maybe he doesn't speak English Wally, lets move on.  I dont think this is where the cruises leave from anyway," Kevin said looking around at the boats and realizing that none of them were cruising vessels.  They were all fishing boats of various sizes and some quite small, most looked threadbare and as if it would sink without warning. 

"I speak English," the man said pulling out a cigarette and lighting it with his hand cupped to the wind, a match being struck from out of nowhere. 

Wally just stared at the man, waiting on an answer.  The man returned his stare.  Kevin and I stared at the two of them, then at each other, both of us shrinking back away from a situation that had the markings of being potentially fatal like a West Side Story ambush.

"Bir million," the man finally said once Kevin and I were nearly back up to the road.  He motioned to his boat, an outboard thirty-four footer of painted white fiberglass. 

There was a feeling of nausea that swept over me, perhaps seasick from the movement of the dock or that we were about to agree to vanish into the night on a small craft with a man who didnt feel the need to clean fish guts from his shirt.

"Done," Wally said and with a sweeping motion asked us to join him on the dock. 

"Bir million what is that again?" I asked, struggling with exchange rates. 

"About five dollars," Wally smiled, obviously proud of himself.  We realized then that Wally was fearless.  It was probably why he was successful at work despite having the appearance of a devil-may-care approach.  It wasn't that he was ambivalent, he just wasnt worried.  He hopped in the boat and the four of us spent the night puttering around the edges of the Bosphorous seeing Istanbul from the water.  Without the benefit or distraction (depending on your point of view) of lights on most of the tour boats, you could see the lights of the city once known as Constantinople wind through hills and paint the sides of buildings in a warm orange glow.  I realized that this was by Wally's design.

From there the trip was a whirlwind of activity, all off the beaten path.  Dark alleyways, open air markets with dinners cooked in pots on the sides of the roads, and me, and Kevin and Wally, standing out from our hosts with the whitest skin and lightest hair.  Wally relished his uniqueness in the midst of this new culture, but he still went out of his way to find ways to become less American, less tourist and more of a traveler.  He found a way for us to take Whirling Dervish lessons, not that much was required to twirl.  On the second night, he conned someone into giving us a night tour of Haggia Sophia which was lit only by our spotlights at 3 o'clock in the morning.  An eerie calm overwhelmed me in the former Christian church that was converted to an Islamic mosque.  Gold mosaics sparkled as our beams passed over them and I heard the echo of only four voices, mine, Kevin's, Wally's and our guide who may or may not have been risking his job.  There were no others around and the feeling began to grown that perhaps travel was indeed different than touring.  In the evenings we would find ourselves sitting between the minarets of the Haggia Sophia and the Blue Mosque to hear the call to prayers.  The chants or songs were plaintive, and spooky while being somehow comforting and natural.  There was always an odd silence that followed, as if for a minute, all moving things stopped, and the hum of activity frozen in the air above us, lifted by the earlier voices of the masses across the city and suspended there in a collective silent breath. 

It was breath I was trying to find on our third day as I lay against the white marble and allowed a man who spoke no English to touch my virtually naked body.  "Easy, ouch, easy," I said to no avail. 

Across the room a door opened and another man dressed in a thin skirt like those we wore entered the chamber.  Despite my hopes, no cold air rushed in with him and I let my head roll back on my sponge pillow to stare straight up at the ceiling.  I heard the mans wooden clogs clipping across the tile floor and stopping just fifteen feet or so from where I was getting my massage of sorts. 

"Please, change," said a voice heavy with accent.  "Please, change."

"Excuse me?" Kevin asked, either not understanding the words or the desired action.

"Please, change," said the man.  I rolled back to look in his direction.  The man was motioning with his hands towards the floor and Kevin just kept looking down and confused.

"I think he wants you to stand up Kev."  Those are probably the only two English words he knows so figure it out from his motions, Wally said recovering from his own massage.  He was the second of us to get the treatment, I was last.  Wally's round face was nearly as red as Kevin's highly stressed thin one.

Kevin stood up, rewrapped his thin skirt and followed the clipping sound of the man's togs over to one of twenty giant sinks around the walls.  The man turned on the water, filled the basin and from a small shelf above the sink, he grasped a plastic bowl and dipped it in the water.  Kevin's face tightened, the skin stretched around his mouth as he winced in expectation of hot water on his already hot, sweaty body. 

"Please say its cold,... oww dammit..." I said to Kevin as I winced when the masseur hit a knot in my lower thigh. 

The man in wooden clogs poured the bowl of water over Kevins head and I saw his expression soften.  He was almost smiling now.  "Its cold, thank God, its cold," he said.  But he tightened up again when he saw the man don a hand mitt with a pumice surface.  I watched as Kevin received a scrubbing that took off two layers of skin, leaving him red all over.  Wally just sat back, closed his eyes and waited his turn.

When that part of the bath was over, Kevin was ushered out of the room to, I imagined, some new torture chamber where we would not be able to mentally prepare for our impending abuse by listening to Kevin's girlish screams.  Wally was then taken to the sinks just as my massage ended and I was given a brief, yet extremely hot reprieve before I was to begin my own pumice bath.  Eventually Wally was taken from the room and I was left alone with my bath master.  The cooling water over my head was a huge relief, so much so that I didn't mind the scrubbing and skin loss.  Ten minutes later, I was laid out on a padded table, covered with oils by a third man and given a soft massage through a thick white towel.  It was not another torture chamber after all.

The experience was over except for the tipping and I went downstairs once I had dressed to find Kevin and Wally already moving through a line of our attendants passing out millions of Turkish lira.  When we have given the last of our bills, we stepped back out into the alley where the sun shone only on one side of the buildings.

"How about some lunch boys?" Wally asked.  I saw this little place down the road with lamb turning on a spit, can't beat that I say."  He started walking in the direction he had motioned, not waiting to see if Kevin or I would follow, knowing that we would.

The place was less than he described, it was a storefront with no store, just a window and spit with a dark block of what we assumed was lamb turning on a spit.  "Donerli..." Wally said to the man standing next to it.  The man reached into a small drawer underneath the spit, a warming drawer to our surprise, and produced a round piece of flatbread which he filled with lettuce, tomato, onions and a white yogurt from containers set up on a small table in front of the window.  He then sliced off a few strips of the brown meat, rolled the bread into a tight wad and handed it to Wally.  "Teshekurler," Wally said to thank the man in his own language.

We followed suit and the three of us stood on the sidewalk eating street meat, Turkish style. 

It wasnt long after lunch that Kevin began to complain that his stomach was hurting and that he needed to find a bathroom.  There was a toilet in the small guest room that the three of us shared, partitioned off only by a swinging saloon-style door. I was learning quickly that Americans are most spoiled in the bathrooms.

"I think I can make it back to the room in time," Kevin said timidly, his voice cracking slightly and betraying his lack of confidence. 

"Okay then, you guys go on back, and I'll go see if I can arrange some transportation to Cappadoccia.  I'll meet you guys back at the guest house.  Travel well, Bean, Kevin."  The wishes seemed odd at the time, but Wally was always being goofy, particularly when caught up in an adventure so we let it slide and headed back in the direction of our room. 

Kevin waddled, pinching his walk to try and hold it all in.  By the time we were near the room, he was sweating and noticeably uncomfortable. 

"Just one more block Kev, hang in there.  It was bound to happen to one or all of us sooner or later with the stuff weve been eating."

"Yeah, I know."  He winced and after a pause said, but I wouldn't have changed a thing.  I mean eaten anything differently, you know?"

"Yeah, I do.  That lamb today was freaking great." 

"Yep.  Looks like Ill be seeing it again soon."  We arrived back at the room; he pushed open the door and practically hopped the last two steps through the swinging door.  I waited outside while he finished up and once I heard the flush, I went into the room where our three cots took up most of the space.  There were three small tables that could be used as a nightstand or a place to stack your packs; otherwise the room had no furniture. 

I lay down on the bed and covered my head with my arms.  "What do you suppose they're doing back in Atlanta now?"

"Who cares man?  They aren't here, and they don't know what its like.  Kevin took off his glasses.  You know Bean, Im so glad we took this trip."

"Yeah, me too."

After that, I guess we both fell asleep on our cots waiting on Wally and still feeling the need to recover from our Turkish bath.  When we woke up, Wally still wasn't there so we played cards for another hour to wait.  After a while, we opened the door and saw that it was dark out.  We thought about going out to look for him but had no idea where to start so we sat, waited and began to worry.  Kevin started to search the room as if he had somehow snuck back into the room and hid underneath his cot like a contortionist cramming himself into a tiny box.  Then it dawned on us both that we hadnt seen Wally's backpack.  In fact, if we thought back to the morning and replayed it all in our head, it hadnt been there even then.  Had he planned it all along?  Was he trying to scare us?  We didnt know.  After another hour of waiting and talking, we decided to approach the proprietor of our guest room.  The squat man with dark hair and choppy English said that Wally had left a message and he retrieved it from a drawer in his small wooden desk that served as his entire office. 

The note said only this:  "I am and will be, okay.  Don't let anyone anywhere worry for I am among friends.  Bean, Kevin, TRAVEL WELL!"

I would like to believe that we took it well right from the start, but we didn't.  Such a sudden disappearance would likely shock just about anyone and we didnt think it inappropriate to contact the embassy to be on the lookout for Wally.  But somehow, we both came to realize that we wouldnt find him.  We wasted several more days looking, calling people back home, relaying the message but no one was really surprised.  And soon, neither were we.

"I think his message is a little melodramatic don't you?" I asked Kevin after we had given up the search.

"Yeah, but that is typical, always hogging the glory." 

"You know he isn't afraid..."

"No, Im sure he isn't."

"So what now?" I asked.

"We travel well the rest of this trip," Kevin said, tossing the map in my direction.  "Cappodoccia anyone?" 

Kevin and I finished the trip, visiting the hovels and towns off the beaten path.  We ate with locals wherever we could, we found transportation where it seemed as though there was none and we danced the local dances and got drunk on the local liquors. 

I believe that because of that trip, we both returned to the United States changed men.  We went about our jobs with renewed vigor but in a different state of mind.  It was just a job, not our life.  We knew that there was so much more out there.  We werent scared anymore; we were inspired. 

We didn't hear from Wally again, not in name at least, but we were certain that he was the source of postcards we received from time to time, each from a part of the world not familiar to most tourists, but another name on a long list of places to visit for the world traveler.  They came from distant destinations, spanning the globe and all with just four words written in all uppercase letters:  TRAVEL WELL MY FRIENDS.  No signature.

Kevin and I have continued to travel yearly and I relay this story to you now from a guest room in Livingston, Guatemala, a town not accessible by road, only boat.  The people here are a friendly mix of Carribean natives, Africans, and Hondurans and they have allowed us access to their internet before we set out for a sail to an island off the coast with no electricity or running water where, and only three or four buildings at all.  We will be there for a few days diving before moving on.  We hope we travel well. 

I log these travel stories to you, my friends, as a reminder that we spent three days in Istanbul following Wally and it changed us forever.  In the end, I believe we will spend the rest of our lives following Wally.