If there’s one thing I love, it’s to be inconvenienced.
Excuse me sir, whatever it is you’re selling, could you repeatedly shout it at the top of your lungs through a bullhorn outside my window on this glorious Sunday morning please? What is it, onions? Potatoes? I don’t care, that’s fine, even though I know I can buy onions and potatoes anywhere, it’s amazing to know that if I so desired I could just be woken up from deep sleep at 7:30 am, get out of bed, hastily put on some clothes, walk down three flights of stairs, and buy a sack of cheap onions and/or potatoes from the back of your pickup so that I can proceed to eat twelve kilos of onions and potatoes for the next ten days of my life. Why is that nice to know? Because I love the inconvenience of it all!
I always knew I was in the best city to satisfy my compulsive need to be inconvenienced. Once I was aware that this was the dream place where I could be annoyed to my heart’s content, it was only a matter of finding the right flat where there would be regular water and electricity cuts, where the acrid stench of black mold in my dank bathroom and under my humid kitchen sink would creep up my nostrils with every neuron-killing breath, where the ceiling would always leak after it’s rained, and where there would always be a construction site somewhere near my home in which the constant sound of jack-hammering, workers shouting, and rubble being thrown on to a truck from a considerable height would only be drowned out by the raspy voice of a transvestite neighbor who likes to sing loud songs off-key every afternoon in what could only be an atrociously misguided attempt at securing a spot on a pop music reality show. Yep, I knew when I received a four-month unpaid water bill left over from the previous tenants that this was the place to be for an inconvenience addict like me!
Oh, wait, I have to stop wrjting fori ac secvodn… it’s the call to prayer from the mosque next door… at 100 decibels… from two brand new 200-watt speakers that are placed six and a half meters from my window… again, third time today… almost over now… Ok, done. Oh, now it’s the church bells, ding dong ding dong… I love it, whatever thought I had in my head before is gone. Perfect! Now I can retrace my mental steps… let’s see, I was talking about potatoes, mold, transvestites… oh yeah, my inconvenience addiction. Oh wait, that’s the door and the phone at the same time, let me answer those. Ok, wrong number again. Good thing there isn’t a telephone directory in Istanbul, since that would’ve been a little too convenient. Instead we can just dial the number we roughly think might be our friend’s new home number and just hang up without apologizing if we happen to be wrong. Hm, let’s see who’s at the door. Looks like someone’s food delivery came to me by mistake. Oh well, good thing the building and flat numbers aren’t marked out properly, and even if they were, the delivery boy can’t bother to read them, so a very inconvenient mishap is bound to happen. Score!
Ok, where was I? I keep getting distracted, it’s so inconvenient. I love it! Maybe I should just leave the flat for a bit and go for a walk to clutter my head with more noise and too many people everywhere. Aaaah, that’s better, the smell of urine outside my apartment door along with a small pile of shit beneath a cloud of hovering horseflies – the perfect start to an outing on a Beyoğlu backstreet. Ok, now if only the sidewalks were so narrow that I constantly have to jump in and out of speeding cars and scooters going the wrong way on a one-way street while I contort myself into a million awkward positions so that I can fit past people who either walk too slow, or walk three people side by side oblivious to other pedestrians, or who suddenly stop and talk into their cell phones, or who keep walking right down the middle of the footpath even while they’re staring at something behind them over their shoulder with mouth agape, and who then act surprised and indignant when they slam straight into me like it was my fault… that would be divine! Now if the odd person can also just jump out in front of me when exiting a shop or a building without looking left or right, thereby cutting me in my stride and causing me to stand there and wait for them as they decide which way they’re going to go themselves, that would be perfect. Yay! Oh, and could somebody please spit a gob of mucus on to a wall just as they overtake me, and then continue to loudly gurgle up another rumbling slop of sinusitic phlegm into their mouth as I’m left nervously anticipating when and where the next greenish yellow loogie will fly out and land with an audible splash somewhere in front of me? Double yay! Hey, let’s also not forget to enjoy the homeless person and the kid sucking fumes of paint thinner into his mouth from a filthy rag and the pack of feral unemployed youths eyeballing my girlfriend and the beggar asking for money, money, hey, do you have any money? Sweet!
I know I’m not the only inconvenience connoisseur out there. After all, literally thousands of people flock from all over the world to this cutting edge city of inconvenience every year. In fact, you’re probably one of them. So here are some tips to making the most that this city has to offer inconvenience-whores like us: 1) Be impatient. When everybody impatiently tries to get their own stuff done faster than everybody else, there arises an unavoidable bottleneck in which everybody’s business gets delayed way past what the delay would’ve been if everybody were more patient, respectful and considerate instead. That means fights, shouting, haggling, finger-pointing and hatefulness… Inconvenience jackpot! 2) Act like nobody else exists and the world revolves around you. When you block out the existence of others, you naturally end up trampling all over their right to any kind of human consideration. Could anything be more inconvenient for everyone? I think not! 3) Fret. Nothing says ‘I’m better than you’ better than fretting and tsk-tsk-tsk-ing and complaining out loud like you were the last precious person on earth and the world had just been overrun by human-sized dung beetle larvae. Potentially inconvenient situations for everyone concerned as a result of your unabashed arrogance? Check! 4) Be temperamentally volatile and ready to fly off the handle at any given moment because you can’t control your emotions. Someone just made you wait 12 seconds while loading their groceries into their car as you wait for their parking space? Teach them some manners and compare them to villagers and day-laborers (you must first consider those two types of people bad, and then use metaphoric comparison to said people in a pejorative and demeaning sense). Inconvenience factor from resulting two-way mudslinging contest as other vehicles pile up behind you amid the amplified echo of honking car horns in a closed parking lot? High! 5) Let others clean up after you. Hey, are you a garbage collector? Hm? No? Well then are you a street sweeper? Hm? Of course not! So why don’t you just leave all those leftover egg shells and half-eaten sandwiches and newspapers and plastic bags from your picnic strewn all over the park for someone else to pick up? Inconvenience code level: Red!
Now make my day and push into the queue I’ve been waiting in for the last 5 minutes and then threaten me with physical violence when I try to explain that there’s a line of people waiting please!
