I WAS STANDING ON the bridge over the Bosphorus. Istanbul’s cricket captain, Mr. Mubashir Khan (no relation to the great Imran), was facing me, a look of terror in his eyes. The legside was packed with rush-hour traffic honking madly. Behind me was an oil drum for stumps; beyond that, the Blue Mosque and Hagia Sophia.
Still in work clothes, Mr. Mubashir focused on his spot, loosened his shoulders, trotted in, and released. The tennis ball, pushed gently by the breeze from the Sea of Marmara, swung in. I charged to counteract. As the ball bounced a second time I launched it cleanly into the distance. Mr. Mubashir, mouth agape, turned on his heels to watch. The ball struck a pillar, ricocheted into the rush-hour traffic, rebounded off a truck, and plopped over the bridge into Asia. Somewhere in that direction was the Darts and Cricket Federation of Azerbaijan.
Mr. Mubashir Khan had just become the first man to be hit between continents. I shook his hand and awarded him a cricket bat.
“Now let’s get out of here,” he said.
We darted from the scene.
I ABANDONED THE Škoda at the academy, and Saif escorted me by minibus to Sofia’s central train station. After hearing from Swedes gassed between Krakow and Budapest, and from Aussies who woke to find holes in their pockets in Zagreb, I decided I’d book a private cabin on the night train. The last thing I wanted was to wake in Istanbul penniless and find my pants on the wrong way around.
“You will be safe,” said Saif. “Any problems, please call me. Do you want me to wait till you leave?”
“No thanks, Saif. I don’t want to hold you up. I’ll be fine. What can happen?”
“Okay. I’ll see you in a few days.”
Saif departed and I walked out onto the smoggy, hot street. I bought a tram ticket and rode up the main boulevard in search of an internet café again. My schedule was tight, and Yahoo! was key to pulling the plan together. The email I most wanted was waiting in my inbox, from Turkey’s cricket supremo.
To: Angus Bell
From: Professor Syed, Bilkent University, Ankara
Dear Angus Bell,
We have been waiting for the final confirmation of your visit. In couple of hours we should be able to finalize who will receive you at the station. I will try to meet you in Istanbul myself. So please check your email, if you can. We will give you all the information. Or you can call me and find out about the arrangement.
Best regards, Syed
I logged off and left to return to the train station.
As the tram doors closed, every passenger in the carriage surged forward. Within ten seconds, fifteen well-dressed men and women were huddled around me, pushing with intensifying force. My backpack tipped, and I fought to stop myself tumbling onto the shriveled babushka beside me. There was no need for this. There was a large space behind the mob. I clung to a pole with increasing strain and battled to stay upright. The shoving grew, and my legs buckled.
“For fuck’s sake! What are you playing at?” I shouted. “Move back!”
I felt three sharp tugs at my money belt. Oh God. My money, my passport.
“GET OFF, YOU BASTARDS!” I screamed. I doubled over and burrowed backwards, swinging my backpack into bodies. Now, more than ever, I needed Mr. Saif and his martial arts skills.
The tram screeched to a halt and I tumbled to the floor. The doors opened and I saw my teenage muggers flee. The mob returned to their seats and pretended to read newspapers. I stood up and spun in circles, arms outstretched, ready to attack. Every passenger had been in on it. I reached down and felt my money belt still attached to my waist. This was merely a two-minute tram ride. I shuddered at what I might face on the midnight express.
I COWERED UNDER my blanket in the darkness, the slow grind and whistle of the wheels keeping me awake. Though alone in my seventies compartment, I was taking no chances. Paranoid about theft and rape, I lay in bed with a cricket bat on either side of me. I had stuffed my camera and money belt down my boxer shorts.
I drifted in and out of consciousness in the early hours, woken frequently by the neighboring compartment’s ghetto blaster. Bill Bryson’s summation in Neither Here Nor There rang frighteningly true: “If you can imagine a man having a vasectomy without anesthetic to a background accompaniment of frantic sitar-playing, you will have some idea of what popular Turkish music is like.”
My bladder pulsed, so I slipped out from under my blanket and slung on my backpack. I crept into the shaking corridor to find a toilet. As I tiptoed between the narrow carriages, I came face to face with four Roma men unscrewing panels and stuffing plastic bags with white stuff in them into the gaps. I did a double take. The men looked at me and motioned with their fingers I should keep quiet.
I held up my hands. “Oh, boy. I ain’t seen nothing,” I said. “I’ll stay in my room and piss in the sink.” I returned with haste to my chamber and sealed the door. I pulled the blanket over me. For the rest of the night I dreamed of John Hurt being buggered in a Turkish prison.
At 6:45 AM there was a rap on the door. I shot out of bed, seminaked, cricket bat in hand. When I opened the door my money belt and camera slipped from my boxer shorts, landing with a thump on the floor. The uniformed Bulgarian border guard examined the scene. He looked at the cricket bat warming in my bed and said, “Gym work, yes?” He shaped to lift a dumbbell.
I nodded, and he collected my passport.
An hour later we shunted forward twenty yards and stopped at the Turkish checkpoint. The guards turfed me out of bed and sent me to the platform to buy a visa. The visa man wouldn’t accept Scottish notes.
“But it’s £10!” I said.
“This is not pound,” he stated again and again. I dipped into my dwindling supply of U.S. dollars, normally reserved for bribes. He happily fixed a magic sticker in my passport.
Back on the train, progress was slower than usual in that we weren’t moving at all. Three hours evaporated, my patience fading faster than my dollar supply. The stillness was broken by a woman’s scream, followed by heavy thuds down the carriage.
I peered from my door to investigate. Those same plastic bags I’d seen being stuffed behind the panels in the night were now in the hands of customs guards. Twenty passengers were being led away on the platform in handcuffs. A sniffer dog padded past me in the corridor, and I went to pet it. Then I realized this might not be a good idea. What if narcotics had been concealed in my compartment?
It was time to abandon post. I made my way to the far end of the train. Almost every compartment was empty. Two-thirds of the train had been implicated in the drug run.
“What’s happening?” I asked the conductor, who was parading around in a string vest as though he’d lost hope of ever leaving.
“They find 350 ecstasy pills,” he said. “The gypsies, they say, ‘But the pills are white! Ecstasy is green!’ The Bulgarian guards take some pills and leave rest for Turkish police. Now we wait on fingerprint man from Istanbul. That is still five hours away.” He let out a grunt.
By the time the midnight express pulled into Istanbul, I had three hours till my return journey. I looked for a pay phone and called Professor Syed.
“What happened?” he asked. “We sent people to find you. You are in Istanbul? I am still in Ankara. I will get someone to meet you.”
Within minutes a small Pakistani man whisked me away from the station. As we picked our way through the busy streets, between carpet shops and grilled-fish vendors, we saw a beggar with no legs crawling with his hands in slippers.
I was taken to a house above a sports shop. There, confused cricketers had gathered, headed by the mustachioed Mr. Mubashir Khan, a sports importer extraordinaire and captain of Istanbul’s cricket team.
“So, we heard something about a bridge from Professor Syed in Ankara,” said Mr. Mubashir. “What is your program?”
“It’s quite simple. I just need someone to bowl at me on the bridge, and I’m going to smack them from Europe into Asia.”
Mr. Mubashir’s face, along with those around him, drained of color. He was hesitant in his response. “There is a problem. Since a few years now, you are not allowed to walk on the bridge, only with special government permission. This is because of all the suicides. It can take weeks to get clearance, and there are police all over the place. For how long you are here?”
“Three hours.”
“I am sorry, my friend, it is not possible.”
I felt like I’d been bloodied by a Brett Lee bouncer.
“Look, I don’t care if I get arrested, but I have to do this. I’ve planned it for two years! What if we were to ask the police?”
“When Michael Jackson asked permission to see the throne at the palace, they told him no. Not even him. He was so angry he canceled his concert and left right away. I don’t think asking will work. They are very, very strict about this bridge.”
“There has to be a way.”
“Perhaps we could take a boat across, and you can hit me on that.”
“See! There is a way!” I leapt to my feet and grabbed the bats.
“Okay. I will fetch the tennis balls.”
As Mr. Mubashir drove through rush hour, joined by two teammates, he looked like a condemned man. We talked about the state of the Turkish game. His players were forced to drive six hours to Ankara to play against its three supermarket-sponsored teams because they had no ground.
“We leave work on Friday, drive there, and play Friday, Saturday, and Sunday before coming back.”
Mr. Mubashir was a sponsor of the national handball team, and he had some startling statistics about baseball bat sales in Istanbul.
“They are among the biggest sellers here. You can find them in every market. But there is no game! Nobody plays. It is only for beating people! Hah! Maybe I will introduce cricket bats for this.” He was a shrewd businessman.
The traffic thickened and Mr. Mubashir accelerated through the gaps, tooting like a Turk. “Change of plan. We will go to the bridge first and ask the police. Maybe because you have come all this way they will allow it, but I am not sure.”
One of Mr. Mubashir’s biggest wishes was to raise awareness of Turkish cricket.
“But I don’t know how to do this. Have you any ideas?”
“You could break the world record for the longest non-stop cricket match,” I suggested, “like that French team, and then the one in Australia. Play for twenty-seven hours.”
“Hah! No problem! My team, they play cards all night. This is easy! We will do twenty-eight hours!”
We neared the bridge and tension gripped the carload. An ice cream vendor knocked on the window and jogged after us. Mr. Mubashir bought four treats.
Dry land disappeared, and we zipped over the Bosphorus. All eyes darted from the windows. As we touched into Asia, a convenient parking bay appeared. There was no sign of any police.
“I have never seen this!” exclaimed Mr. Mubashir. “Quickly! We must go!”
Whistling to avert suspicion at first, then bolting, we made our way along the abandoned pedestrian strip, crouching as though a sniper hid in the girders.
“Okay, this is far enough, I think,” called Mr. Mubashir, twenty paces behind.
“We must go farther!” I said, continuing towards the center, where a blue oil drum lay in wait as stumps.
I turned at the oil drum and practiced my lofted drives. Mr. Mubashir loosened his arms and approached. His teammates took up positions at wicketkeeper and slip. What if I missed? There wouldn’t be a second chance at this. Match rules applied, and the stumps were enormous.
It was all over in a minute. As we sprinted back to the car, its engine still turning, my gracious opponent was breathless with excitement.
“This is amazing!” he cried. “I have never seen this place empty! Every day it is crawling with police! The whole time you could see in my face I was afraid. It was your fate! The power of your concentration, coming thousands of kilometers! When you told me, I knew it was impossible. I think it was the rays coming out from your brain!”