“Dyuryumva-dyuryuva!” the vendor shouted in a hoarse and piercingly loud patter, throwing shreds of lettuce, French fries and chunks of coarsely chopped spit-roasted meat into my lunch. His face radiated the indifferent disdain of a pig farmer who, like many years before, feeds his cattle the same food every single morning.
“Dyuryumva-dyuryuva!” he shouted again, handing me a huge portion of food wrapped in a fragrant thin duryum, but this time with a friendly smile. And again, without any surprise, I discovered that the most delicious food is prepared with disdain.
The hot summer day cast a gray translucent haze of humid sea air in the distance, in which the smells, sounds and colors of Europe and Asia mixed. I was in Europe, but a ship from the opposite bank of the Bosphorus arrived, and I mingled in the crowd with people who had arrived from Asia and were running off to do their business. Some were running to catch a departing tram, some were looking around for something to eat, some were knocking the wheels of their suitcases on the pavement tiles, heading to the train station, and some were already here, like me, deciding what to do next.
“Should I go to Asia?” I asked myself, mentally weighing the prospects for such a development of events. And then the megaphone hanging on the wall of the seaport began speaking in Turkish. This is a symbol, I thought, and headed for the token machine. I stuck a bill into the bill acceptor and put my finger to the button for issuing a token, but there was already a finger of a young boy there, who, unnoticed by me, had crept up from below and slightly to the left, trying to “help” me get the token, so that later, he could ask for a tip with his hand held out. This made me angry, so the young boy was left with nothing. Let him learn to be more tactful, I thought, putting the token into the machine.
I went out onto the pier and stopped. I had again found myself in a place that I don’t often find myself in. I stood there for a long time, almost stupefied, staring at the picture that stunned me in place with its dynamics, scale and tension. I imagined myself dissolved in this tension, as if a part of me was present in all the objects that move, standing, and then suddenly moving, or, moving at great speed, suddenly stoping.
In the seeming kaleidoscope of diversity, a strict mosaic of rationality suddenly opened up. Each object moved along a given trajectory, sometimes known only to it. They, as it seemed to me, should have collided, but they did not. Big, small, very tiny and huge, multi-colored. The big ones hummed, the small ones whistled, the very tiny ones squeaked. The big ones swallowed or spat out the small ones and they scattered. The huge ones slowly passed by without stopping and without sounds, but those that were smaller than them did not avoid them in any way, but only deftly slipped through the cracks between other large and smaller ones. But there were no more or less important objects in this process. After all, squeaking children in strollers are no less important than huge tankers loaded with containers. After all, they are all busy with one thing. Moving along this thin strip of sea, simultaneously dividing and connecting Europe and Asia, carrying sounds, smells and cargo and each other across the sea, through the air, through souls and glances. The captains of the ships maneuvered in the strait as skillfully as the peddlers of all sorts maneuvered their carts, as the drivers of trains and buses, yachts and motorboats, calmly walked ahead of the huge ships, as mothers with strollers walked in the crowd. A crowd of people on the banks, a crowd of ships in the strait, a crowd of seagulls in the sky, crowds of tourists in the museums, a lot of everything, everything moving and breathing.
And then everything became quiet. I stood alone on the pier and ate my duryumva. There were no ships, people or seagulls, there was no city or buildings. Only me on the shore, and the other shore, water and wind. And there was something else in this place. But what? Oh yes, the Power! That invisible, immaterial, mental force that was already here before everything that manifests this force appeared. It will be here even after everything disappears. It will be attracted, repelled and attracted again. Europe to Asia, the Earth to the Sun, and this oscillating balance in the waves between them. This is Bosphorus oscillating. Here is the Power and I feel it. I give in to the oscillations of this force, I inhale it, let it breathe me and I will remain in it, but…
The muezzin sang from the nearest mosque, bringing me to my senses, the gangway of the ship fell at my feet, from which people poured out in rows, flowing around me. I stepped aside and, letting everyone pass, climbed on board. The sailors cast off the lines and the captain, straight from the pier, turning on full speed, went straight to the Asian shore. Standing at the stern, I looked, listened, breathed and gratefully enjoyed it, the Power.