Walk on the Rail Side

Every society has it. The thing that glues us together, for a moment, for ever, who knows. For some it’s the founding myth, the landscape of mountains or valleys or seas, for some it’s the freedom of self protection or the freedom of happiness, for some there is no such thing like society, and for some it’s the community itself.

Of course everyone of us has an own idea about this which makes the whole concept a paradox at the same time. May be this is the miracle why it still works?

My parent’s house is somewhere on one of the many hills in Istanbul (people say Istanbul was built on seven hills like Rome but there are actually much more). On the other side of the street there is a park (the Gezi park on Taksim square is as you know or may imagine actually not the last one) from where you can overlook a part of the Bosporus. In mid 80s I was once standing there with a friend who was visiting Istanbul. It was already dark and you could see thousands of lights on both sides of the sea. He asked me what I would say Istanbul is all about. I thought it’s the flickering of all these lights: A spectrum of different shades from yellow to orange, blurred by the humid sea air and always wafting because of the erratic voltage of electricity.

Electricity was a precious good at that time. More than that: electricity fall out was a daily ritual. Mostly happening when people came home from work, cooking dinner, and using all these devices you need to run a household. So everyone had candles ready, or if not, you would just go down to the grocer, where the guy would sit there with lit candles as well, to get some. Dinner would turn into something like a pick nick and the whole atmosphere would throw you into an ambience of nature, if you like to the nomadic roots. It was never annoying, the fall out moment was always accompanied by joyful sound of a long and oooooh as if everyone couldn’t wait for this to happen. As if the community around the candles and food and drinks was a sudden gift by the insufficient system of electricity. It is like a fatalistic lack of believe in technology, systematically losing out against nature, as if there always was the mother of insurance no matter where society would go to.

Yesterday, the first undersea tunnel connecting two continents was opened. Exactly on the 90th anniversary of the founding of the Republic of Turkey Marmaray started its first ride with a capacity of 1,5 million commuters per day and more than 50 meters underneath the Bosporus between the two shores of Istanbul. One of the world’s largest infrastructure projects was completed to shuttle you in less than 4 minutes from Europe to Asia. An anti-stroke program against the ever growing but glutinous traffic, a partial cure for a major every day burden of more than 17 million Istanbulers, and may be from 2015 on, the replacement of the missing link of a new silk road so to say.

Today, all of a sudden, the great migration was interrupted. Electricity fell out, trains didn’t move anymore, and all passengers had to leave the train. So, people crossed more than 50 meters underneath the sea from Asia to Europe like their nomadic ancestors migrating from Central Asia to Little Asia.

Now, there is a lot of malice around, the country is polarized anyway. While the majority was celebrating the accomplishment on this symbolic holiday, others were protesting against the regime and the prime minister. Gezi is still there. Tweets were going crazy, some pouring oil into the fire, some calling people to harmony.

Meanwhile the people underneath the sea were walking along side the rail tracks, all together, may be there was a joyful sound of “ooooh”, may be not, but if they had candles they would have lit them, and if not, some one should open a grocer on the ground of the Bosporus. I think that would be great.

Nomadic Bosporus Submarine Trail (Photo taken by a passenger)