The Pillars of Hercules

Plenty of empty cabins, he indicated. The price was thirty-four million Turkish liras—cash. This was $940, not bad for a twelve-day cruise. I wondered whether I could get aboard. I decided to try.

What followed was a bullying drama enacted by mustached men in brown suits, chain-smoking and muttering in broken English. It was also manic pursuit through Istanbul traffic. The Syrians complained about my insisting on having my passport back prematurely. The hotel complained that I had not given them prior notice of checking out. The post-office money changers were on strike, and so I went to a usurer who laughed at my credit card and took nearly all my cash. Eventually I had my passport, my bag, and the money. I was panting from the effort, and I had less than an hour left to buy my ticket, buy an exit stamp from the police, get through customs and immigration, and board the ship. Then the police complained, the immigration officials complained, and so did the agent. The counting of the thirty-four million in torn and wrinkled bills of small denomination took quite a while.

Amazingly, just before the gangway was raised I was hurried aboard the Akdeniz and given my cabin key.

“My name Ali,” the steward said.

That was his entire fund of English words; but it was enough. He was a short bulgy man, forty or so, in baggy pants and stained white shirt. He seemed glad to see me, and I thought I knew why.

A large Turkish suitcase had been placed in my cabin. The suitcase alone filled the floor space, and bulked in my fears. I imagined my cabin-mate. He would be called Mustafa, he would snore, he would smoke, he would natter in his sleep, he would get up in the middle of the night so often I would nickname him “Mustafa pee,” and he would retch—or worse—in the tiny head. He would toss peanut shells onto the floor. He might be antagonistic; worse, he might be friendly. Indeed, he might not be Mustafa at all, but rather a big tattooed biker called Wolfie, with scars and a blue shaven skull; or a ferocious backpacker; or a demented priest, or a pilgrim, or a mullah with wild staring eyes. At these prices you got all kinds.

Ali was outside the cabin, waiting for me. He knew what I had seen. He knew what was in my mind. Ali may have had an infant’s grasp of English but he had intuition bordering on genius.

“Ali, you find me another cabin,” I said.

He understood this.

“One person—just me. This ship has plenty of empty cabins.”

Just to make sure there was no misunderstanding I whispered the password, baksheesh.

He smiled and showed me his dusky paw: Welcome to the Eastern Mediterranean.

He narrowed his eyes and smiled and nodded to calm me, to reassure me that he was going to deal with this matter immediately. Give me a little time, he was suggesting.

I looked at the rest of the ship. It reeked of rotting carpets and sour grease and damp Turks and strange stews and old paint and tobacco smoke. There were about a hundred passengers, all of them Turkish. Not a single backpacker, or German tourist, nor any priests or pilgrims. The Turks on board, in thick shawls and brown suits, were drinking tea and smoking and fretting. And men and woman alike, all bespectacled, had that Turkish look of uniform disguise that resembles someone wearing fake glasses attached to a false nose-and-mustache.

I was not alarmed by any of it until the Turks themselves began to complain about the ship.

“I was not expecting this,” Mr. Fehmi said. He had worked at a NATO base for sixteen years and spoke English fairly well. “This is a great disappointment.”

We were among the few drinkers on the ship. We were soon joined by a ship’s officer who explained that the Akdeniz was experiencing difficulty leaving the quayside. It was a forty-year-old ship, with no bow thrusters, so a tug had to snag a stern line and spin the ship one hundred and eighty degrees to the edge of the Golden Horn, and only then could we get away.

But in this slow turning the whole skyline of Istanbul revolved, gray and golden in the late-afternoon light, the sun setting behind the mosques and the domes and the minarets. I counted thirty minarets and a dozen domes, and with the ferries hooting, and the fishing boats and the caïques and the freighters dodging us, everything at the confluence of these great waters—the Bosporus, the Golden Horn, the Sea of Marmara—sparkled and rang with life. And then we were truly under way, passing Topkapi Palace and the city wall that still showed breaches where it had been blasted open by the Ottomans in 1453.