PLOV 2 - Dog Nap
PLOV
No news of migratory species today; we're still on the road. Following the tracks from Tashkent to Samarkand in the Afrosiyob, after a twenty-hour layover and four-hour flight and no sleep. Feeling surprisingly fine. Today, we are the migratory species.
And yesterday (which still feels like today--see no sleep) was Istanbul. I close my eyes and I still see it in little flashes.
In the little family restaurant where they serve meat stew fresh from its fire-heated clay pot, there's a man with a diaper taped around the back of his head. Pure white. I look closer: not a diaper, a bandage. He's the first of many I see. Everywhere, that day: big, shaven-headed Russian guys, all bandaged up in the exact same place. A diaper-head convention.
Turns out: Turkey is the place to come to graft someone else's hair on your balding head. So: Russians with hair plugs. A crowd of them, a real confrérie of big, once-bald, grumpy-looking men who look like they're recovering from heavy damage to the brain stem via a cricket bat.
The guy we saw at the restaurant was in the hotel the morning after. When he plucked some sliced grapefruit onto his place for breakfast, I noticed his bandage was soaked yellow-red with blood, like someone had painted a sunset on it while he slept.
We walk in the old city. What am I for here? This morning, I'm just a jetlag-hazed set of ears and eyes taking in white noise. Walking the narrow streets fuzzy from taking in hard cobblestone / scarved nene hawking hankies / skinned sheep's heads under plastic / hello can I show you something! from the rainbow-scented spice stalls. Camera welded to my hand, I'm a clear mark. I am for being dazzled and spun out like a thread all around this place. Tourist.
It helps when we cross the Bosphorus. The Bosphorus, water churning white with boats, doesn't want anything. But Istanbul wants the Bosphorus to be crossed, clearly. Thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands, crisscrossing it from blue shore to blue shore. If there are routes, I can't tell what they are. I watch two ferries narrowly dodge one another, the first one's wake sluicing up into the second's passenger deck.
On the Galata bridge we pass rows of fishing lines set out like flags in an honour guard. No one is paying much attention when a fish comes up, it's no great victory. There is a lot of smoking and checking in on one another and--presumably--making fun of each other's catches. The bait fish are kept clear buckets, glinting silver in the light.
I spy a some glasses of water and, thirsty, walk up to see one of them fuzzy with legs, filled to the brim with millipedes.
The dogs! My travel companions like the cats, which are famous and everywhere and generally nonplussed and catlike. But God, may my life be as blessed as that of an Istanbul dog's. Big blond Retriever mix lying by the fountain, snoring loudly. White-grey mustachioed mutt flopping himself onto the warm cobblestones and rolling over luxuriously. If I thought any further I'd worry about their matted fur and their aimlessness and start asking questions, but the day is sun-drenched and the ground is warm and every dog I see is sunning, eyes half-closed in the peculiar satisfaction of the Dog Nap.
We cross a street towards a ferry to reach the other side and I brush up against a grey-black hound trotting from the other direction, perfectly blended in with the crowd. Maybe it's there with someone. Maybe it's just adapted to cross in packs. Either way it seems nonplussed by the row of cars honking at everyone; pleased with itself, even. I wish I could follow them all day, these furry Buddhas taking in the sun.
On the other shore--my first time in Asia--no one tries to sell us anything. We find a restaurant with tabbouleh so parsley-green and spicy and tart that I want to cry. I eat spoonful after spoonful of tahini-laced hummus and declare that I would like to be embalmed in a bathtub of the stuff.
Leaving Istanbul, all around the airport: recovered Russian dudes with little black scalpular tufts in well-ordered rows, like they'd made out with the wrong end of a hedgehog. Like the Buddha got grumpy, and forgot to shave.
I am grumpy; I forgot to shave. I have had precisely zero hours of sleep in the last twenty-four hours. I am, at time of writing, travelling at two hundred kph. The very nice train attendant is doing what must be his fourth round (coffee; fruit cups; tea; chips and sundries), encouraging me in his own way to practice my nyet, spasiba. We're not there yet, but Samarkand is coming; and with Samarkand, sleep. A long Dog Nap for all. I hope you get one, too.
Napping already -
B
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