Belly Was Full Of, Well, Cop \"I\"

¶ … belly was full of, well, cop "i" and ayran, because those are the only two things on the menu at roadside restaurants in Turkey. We call the former shish kebob, and ayran is this funny fermented yoghurt drink. It's an acquired taste. One that I tried, without success, to acquire. What I thought would be a bus station was in fact a bus depot. That means no building, just a couple of stops in the open air. The 100 degree, blasting noon heat sort of open air you never really get used to. I was sweaty. I was dirty. Ok, filthy. Who I am kidding? I was wandering, blowing with the wind, and things like showers were starting to seem irrelevant to me, like something you might remember from back home but now were an afterthought to the great adventure. Or something like that. I was a gross mess, sweaty, filthy, and exhausted. But at least my belly was full.

I dead set on getting back to Istanbul. I wanted only that. To me, that was my ticket back to civilization. Which isn't to pass any sort of judgment on the rest of Turkey, but I was started to crave the big city. I was burned out, that's all there was to it. I looked around for a tree to sit under. I saw one, not too far away. Now, I don't know about you, but I can't tell the difference between cat pee and dog pee, so I don't want to blame any species out of line here, but let's just say the base of that tree was uniquely pungent, and even its gloriously cool shade was insufficient reward for spending the rest of my day with stale animal urine smell on my clothes.

It was only about 100 feet back to the bench where in an hour my bus would arrive. But if I was on my way to my own execution I would not have made that walk any slower. My feet shuffled in the dust, then stumbled along asphalt as unctuous as brie as I was now convinced I was on a death march. I sat on the bench, adjusted my hat, put in my headphones and closed my eyes.

The next time I looked up, there was a bus at the station. I think somebody had walked past me, and that's what woke me. I am paranoid when it comes to my bags when I'm overseas. I'm giving grandmas the evil eye if they come too close to my stuff, no joke. The bus was going to "Halep." I'm a smart cookie, I knew what that meant. Aleppo. Ooooooo. Can I go? Ok, I didn't have a visa, and it wasn't part of the plan. I was tired. I was done. I was on the way back to Istanbul, from where I would rest a couple of days and then go home.

Sometimes, opportunity knocks, but it doesn't knock very loud. It knocks real quiet. Aleppo of course was a famously beautiful ancient city, the sort of enchanting ancient city with parts that haven't changed in millennia, the essence of travel's romance and it was at my fingertips. Suffice to say, this incident took place before 2011. Before the Syrian Civil War destroyed Aleppo. It was as easy as handing over a few Turkish lira to the driver, and buying a visa at the border. There aren't too many things I can rightly say that I once had the chance to do, and now never will. A city that didn't change for thousands of years changed in the blink of an eye. I missed it.