A hint of trouble

When we first thought of coming to Turkey, friends responded with questions about how "safe" it would be.

Well, apart from the occasional whisper of an earthquake, it seems as safe as anywhere nowadays.

Along with Sara, a new teacher from America, we accompanied Jordanian Ali yesterday to a part of town where there are a number of music shops, looking for a particular keyboard for his brother. We travelled there by dolmus (shared taxi) and then hoofed it from shop to shop. This part of town is particularly pedestrian-unfriendly with little or no sidewalk and we had to clamber over guard-rails and scurry across traffic lanes between speeding heavy vehicles.

We finally checked with the last shop and were assured that the keyboards we were looking for were sold out. Leg-weary and footsore, and not a little hungry, we were looking for a restaurant. Ali recently found a restaurant in the area where they cook the style of (Jordanian) food he had grown up with - and in fact the proprietors are quite familiar with members of his family back home. So we agreed to go there, and all climbed into a taxi to relieve our tired limbs, expecting a very short ride.

However we soon found ourselves in one of those traffic jams that happen in Istanbul's narrow streets. After a long period of time sitting in the one spot Ali commented that there must be a problem - "an explosion or something", the main streets have been closed. So we got out of the taxi and walked.

We sat in the tiny restaurant enjoying felafel, and 'fool', and humus, while Ali regaled us with tales of back home.

Coming back out of the restaurant, we heard a lot of shouting. It was reminiscent of political rallies (and political training in the schools) we had seen in China. It was a demonstration, a crowd of people were shouting something together as they marched. There were police everywhere as we headed back to the dolmus stop to catch a dolmus home again.

It wasn't until this morning that we heard about a famous reporter who had been shot, and this was what all the fuss was about.

Nothing for us to worry about.