Little girl.
Pink dress. Gas mask. I caught sight of her flitting past in
the Osmanbey metro station, and I was immediately filled with dread. When we emerged from the station, there
was a palpable tension in the air.
We walked toward Taksim, my stomach churning. Dread.
Dread. Sunset and shadows
and a strange smell on the air and dread.
And then it happened.
Hundreds of people running toward us. Surgical masks and people coughing. Found an alcove, a doorway, and paused
to think and breathe.
"Do you speak English? Do you speak English?" a frantic voice next to me was
pleading.
"Yes."
"Is it safe?
Are we safe?"
"I don't know."
"What should we do?"
"I don't know."
We waited.
People were running. And
then we saw a mass of smoke burst from the ground down the street.
"Cover your face!" I screamed to the two women, two tourists from Dubai, who
were huddled beside me.
"Oh my God Oh my God Oh my God..."
The streets were cleared and we were left feeling exposed,
four people naked on the sidewalk, perched in a garbage hole next to Cumhurriyet Avenue. A water cannon slowly rolled past. I felt like its eye was on me, and I tried to be
invisible. It passed. I breathed. Its stalk swerved and the eye hammered water down on someone
a little further up the street. I
concentrated hard, hard, hard on invisibility while a pack of riot police
tramped past us. Like they were hunting. They looked at
us.
Invisible.
Invisible. Invisible. I am.
"Matt, put the camera down."
"No."
He was right. Seconds
passed.
"Put the camera down! They have guns!
They see us!" He
dropped the camera.
"They don't want to shoot us. Just tear gas."
To the two women, concentrating on believing my own words.
Then I felt my face burning. And my eyes.
And throat.
"Cover your face!" They used their hands.
I buried into my t-shirt.
Panic from the two women.
"Can we go after they pass? Can we go? Is
it safe?"
To comfort them gave me some strength. I needed someone to focus my energy
on. They needed someone to guide
them, tell them what to do, tell them it was going to be ok.
We decided to help them to their hotel. They were clutching onto me for dear
life. Somehow they felt safer with
us because we live here. People
look for safety everywhere, everywhere, whether or not it only exists in their minds.
We didn't know what we were doing either. Matt kept the camera rolling.
Blindly, we headed toward Taksim, eyes burning.
Suddenly, it was hard to see.
Through the burning tears sliding down
my face, I saw a shop and stumbled in.
We wandered around blindly for some time while our eyes cleared, and the
people in the shops offered us lemons for our eyes, which counteracts the tear
gas.
We cleared ourselves.
Enough.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=v4o9nKqHxIs
Back into the fray.
Twisting, turning, dodging, guiding. I put my arm around one of the women. Sometimes the other seized my arm. Sirens, tear gas, crowds, chanting,
police.
The dread I had was now full-blown fear. We couldn't go back. There were hundreds of riot police
between us and home. Matt texted
our friend Melanie:
"Are you home?
We're in the neighborhood and gassed."
She told us to come over. We looked further down Cumhurriyet toward Gezi Park and
Taksim. A mantle of tear gas hung
over the street in front of us. We couldn't go that way. We scuttled around corners and back
streets, with the sound of chanting, singing, rattling looming in the dark on
other streets.
Finally we staggered onto Melanie's street and there was anger in the
air. Some people limped toward
us. Some women were running,
gripping each other for dear life.
I could see the police standing up at the end of the street. And I could feel the potential energy,
suspended in the air, of a canister of tear gas flying at us. It didn't happen, but the possibility
hung in the air by my ear. Suspended. The
street writhed, now galvanized with fear and anger.
There's her door.
Make for it. Chaos, energy,
and stand-offs waiting for retaliation.
At the door. Find her
name. Press the doorbell. Buzz. We're in.
And we're in for a night of horrors playing out just below
the windows.
Melanie welcomes us
graciously into her home and we hunker down.
We can't tear ourselves away from the window.
But then sometimes we stumble back and
cover our faces in lemon.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hDDx1cILDAo
A constant barrage of tear gas.
Police raids on shops.
Police beating protesters.
Women screaming at police from upper windows.
Helicopters circling around with spotlights here there
everywhere. To intimidate. It works.
Clanging banging chanting singing corrugated metal fence
pots-and-pans voices.
Kicking back tear gas shells at the police.
Building a barricade of garbage.
Lighting it on fire?
2 AM so much tear gas you can't see the sky. Burning eyes despite closed windows.
3 AM cacophony corrugated metal fence and arms raised.
Pop crack boom scream yell.
Sleep only comes for snatches of minutes when protesters get
gassed, get quiet.
Mostly I am lying awake all night, listening to the rise and fall of conflict just outside the window. Light from helicopters illuminating the room. Trying to keep myself from jumping up to the window every time I hear a crash or an explosion. Other faces hover behind darkened windows across the street. Occasionally we lock eyes.
6 AM quiet. Finally.
Uneasy sleep.
8 AM. Cleanup
crew. Sweeping cleaning throwing
away.
This morning, the streets of Istanbul were littered with
lemons and tear gas shells. A
smell still lingered.
In Taksim, tear gas seemed to burn endlessly. It was quiet but for a distant roar of
voices on Istiklal. Shattered
glass by the trolley tracks. Tear
gas shells... everywhere. Police,
gas masks hanging limply at their sides or under chins, text messages to their
mothers, drinking tea, smoking cigarettes and staring at the ground.
Taksim was shattered, splintered, smashed, in tatters, a war zone the morning
after. I looked on the ground and
saw a small wreath of flowers for a little girl's hair. It was pressed flat into the pavement,
like between the pages of a book.
Sun fell down on us brightly, angrily, ominously. Smoke was tiredly curling out of
dumpsters. We turned away and
began the long, hot march to the nearest open metro station, the sounds of pots
and pans and human voices clanging in the distance.