Midnight Express

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Midnight Express - Adana, Turkey

I am not writing this from a Turkish prison (Turkish prisons are apparently now high tech and afford inmates generous library time), but just barely. A day trip to Tarsus, Turkey with three of the squeakiest clean World Airways flight attendants: Sarah Gorman, Per Clausen and Kelly Lavik (well, two of the squeakiest) turned creepy, ugly, and almost cinematic when the polis boarded our homeward bus at a roadblock.

The cigarette-smoking, leather-acket clad vigilante hauled us off the bus for failing to carry passports. We were asked: “Passa Portas?” The incoherent Turkish question I assume was “Let me see your passports.” And even, “Weir ah yor pah-puz (circa Berlin, 1938)? Our bus, our last Hiltonward bus of the night, pulled off, propelling dust up btheind it. A hubbub of activity then took place at the roadblock, not limited to: much discussion over the foreigners with no ID, searching my, not Kelly’s, handbag in the dark, a pat down by a female officer (no light required), use of our credit cards to read the names to HQ, and calling the Adana Hilton on Per’s phone. All weakened our case. Who carries a worldwide cellphone but no ID? How can the short one have sunscreen in her bag, but no passport? Kelly has a nice camera there. She has no pah-puz either. The Hilton does not keep our passports at the front desk, so the conversation on Per’s phone ended with, “Blahblahblah, no passa portas, blah blah.” I am going to spend the rest of my life in a Turkish prison, but dammit, I will NOT have sun damage.

Sergeant Napolean arrived on the scene. He might be my future husband. World Airways teaches me that to be aware of the Stockholm Syndrome helps prevent it, but awareness had no effect in this case. He gave me his phone number, he got us off, and I am a Frieda in love.

The phone number actually came later. Napolean made some phone calls to the Polis Merkez (Turkish for HQ, he told us) on his own phone and told us (in pretty good English) that as soon as he got word from his superior, he would not only let us go, but also drive us to the bus station. I immediately felt a rush of love not unlike that which I feel for meatballs with lingonberry sauce.

It is too dark at this point for him to see me, other than the glimmer of my bottle blond, on the pitch-dark roadside. Mercifully, his phone rang within seconds. The superior down at HQ gave the go-ahead to release us. We got back in the polis car and catch up to our bus, which had already taken the other passengers to the depot, where they had caught the last bus to Adana.

Napolean said we would have to take a taxi from the depot the 25 or so miles to Adana. I, with my Muslim name, became the polis darling, which happens to me anywhere from rug shops to kebob stands (are the really so different?) throughout Muslimdom (maybe it is the light-colored hair, and not my appellation so similar to beloved wife of Abraham). But Mr. Clausen, Mr. Per Clausen; a Dane, had just remarked that earlier that he did not usually tell Muslims these days that he is Danish, since they seem to blame him for editing that small newspaper. Well Danish, Schmanish! Napolean gives me his phone number and I felt that we would be raising little Bjorn on nothing but love and chicken tava.

For some reason, we do not go in the polis patty wagon to the bus depot to catch our price-gouged taxi. I had been worried all along that two of us were out of cash. I was achingly aware that one cannot bribe a polis officer with an ATM card. We pulled up in front of HQ. There was some discussion with the M16-bearing front guard, but then Napolean rolled up the window and turned to us, “There is a change of plans.”

He continued, “We are taking you to the train station.” And, no, we were not off the hook yet. We were escorted to the florescent illuminated polis office on the platform and turned over to an officer who did not seem happy to have his soap opera interrupted. Our new captor spoke to Per in pidgin German and said that there would be a train in 20 minutes and that he would put us on it. There was no reason, he said, to visit the ATM because he would speak to the conductor on our behalf. I heard Per and the officer confirm the word “frei” several times, while a friend of the officer’s came in to offer us potato chips. He did talk to the conductor, we did board the train, we did arrive safely back at our Hiltonhome pre-bartime, but the conductor knew nothing of our frei ride. Coming up with fare from coins at the bottoms of our bags was the easiest thing we had to tackle all night.

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