My worst dolmuş ride ever

As soon as I hailed the dolmuş I knew I was screwed. It was packed full and the driver was wearing a gold neck chain that rested on a thick teeming bed of chest hair that gushed up through the part in his shirt where there should have been two buttoned buttons instead. His sunglasses pointed in my direction, indicating that he had probably seen me, but he saw fit to stop ten meters down the road instead.

As I ran over to the dolmuş, my laptop swung right and left off my back like a clumsy pendulum, throwing me off balance as I ran, probably giving the impression that I was either drunk or retarded by the time my sweaty red head made its entry into the dolmuş – but only after it first bumped the top of the door. Before I could say ouch, I noticed the automatic door was slowly crushing my thumb with such steady conviction that it seemed to be enjoying it. I just rescued my thumb (though not without letting escape a decidedly unmanly yelp), squeezed into a seat where my knees didn’t fit, put the laptop on my (you guessed it) lap, and tried to look for change in my pocket as I stretched and thrashed and fumbled around to get a single 1 YTL coin out of my sweaty “god-I-wish-I-were-wearing-shorts-instead” pants that were stuck to my skin in the summer heat. I ended up taking out the entire content of my pockets – some bills, a box of gum, and a bunch of coins. No sooner were they out, we hit a speed bump at around 50 km/h, which made me drop all the sweaty contents of my hand on the floor of the dolmuş. It was such an unfortunate event that as soon as I realized it was actually happening, it all seemed as if in slow motion.

Now usually the last thing you want to do on a crowded dolmuş is anything at all except just sitting put until your stop. The very last thing you want to do is look for little coins under people’s feet, trying to act like you’re not some sort of sexual deviant. Well not me, no sir. I relish this kind of stuff... So I gave my laptop to the passenger next to me to hold, and I slowly tried to squeeze my head down into where my knees were, groping around for coins and bills as my face was squashed into the black, sticky upholstery of the seat in front. Just then the driver hit the brakes, and I was thrown off my seat altogether, now on all fours on the floor with my head virtually in the crotch of the passenger who was holding my laptop. Think of beautiful things, think of beautiful things… Halfway as I was getting up, the driver had obviously found some sort of “traffic hole” and relished putting foot to gas pedal, thus throwing me violently back into my seat. Now although my butt made it to the right place, I was still sideways, so my face ended up on the next passenger’s stomach – nose first. Raindrops on roses, whiskers on kittens, beautiful things, beautiful things…

I finally straightened myself up and climbed into my seat with what coins and bills I had been able to scrape up from the floor with my fingernails. The guy next to me stared at me horrified after our Close Encounter of the Disturbing Kind. I took my laptop back and said the only thing a dignified gentleman could say: “Thank you.”

OK, I was cool again, nothing could go wrong now. It was then that the woman in front of me (the one whose ass my face was virtually pressed against while on the floor) decided to close the window next to her, turning to her daughter to add “we’ll get sick if there’s a draft.” The old Turkish “if-the-wind-blows-we’ll-get-sick” superstition strikes again! Now usually, with an open window, you can put up with the smell of a crowded dolmuş. But when that window closes, it’s like you’re suddenly sitting in a massive armpit. As expected, that all-too-common smell of human flesh marinated in its own dried sweat began to take on an almost palpable presence. Before long, the entire dolmuş smelled like a mountain climber’s sock. I pleaded for her to open the window, to no avail. Her look said “Do you want us all to die of pneumonia?” My look said “Of course not… not of pneumonia anyway. Something a lot more painful.”

I was finally relieved when a bunch of people got off at Beşiktaş. We were proceeding along the shores of the Bosphorus, so I could now put my laptop in the seat next to me, slide over next to the window, and look at the beautiful view of… the blurry smudge of hair grease left by the last person who rested their head against the glass. That was it, I couldn’t take it anymore, I had to get off NOW. I told the driver to stop, paid him, and as the door opened and I took my first step out, I felt a ridiculous sense of relief… like a cow that had just had to tap-dance its way out of a slaughterhouse (I said ridiculous). The air was never fresher, the future was never brighter, the dolmuş that was speeding away was never further away from me than at that moment. Actually, I thought, it wasn’t that bad a ride. I mean, I’m sure I’ve had worse rides than that before…

Wait a minute, where’s my laptop?