Terminal 1.
Not the smallest of the terminals, at
least according to the map, but perhaps most diverse in terms of airlines
flying out, Terminal 1 does not inspire confidence. My frustrations over the train (and the fact that I was
carting around 100 pounds of luggage) meant that I didn’t get a chance to
compare it to the other terminals.
But once I’d checked my luggage (again, after waiting an hour for the
six people sitting at the desk to decide that they were now working), I had
free rein of the place. Well, of
Terminal 1. Two full-body x-rays
per day were quite enough for me.
There are approximately five places to
get food in Terminal 1, four of which are duplicates between one end and the
other of the terminal. Large
international flights leave from this terminal, yet there isn’t enough seating
in the waiting area for everyone on even one plane at a time. As a result one generally spends one’s
time in walking from one end of the terminal to the other, or sitting on the
floor, or queuing in the mass of people who refuse to recognize that there is
in fact a queue, or that queues are more than theoretical formations of
individuals. Instead they stand in
a large lump of humanity in front of one desk or another. When one section of a plane is called
for boarding, everyone stands up.
This was my first experience with this
type of line, this mass line. But
I digress. The line is a subject
for another day. Finally, I was
making it, had made it through the boarding process and I was on my plane. Things were certainly looking up. The seats on the plane were large and
comfortable, I had more gadgets than I knew what to do with, and I had a window
seat.
I didn’t sleep on the plane. I never can sleep on planes. Travel, whether to the other side of
the world, or the other side of the state, is too exciting for sleeping. I took pictures. I wrote numerous emails that wouldn’t
be sent until I found a reliable wireless internet connection again. I wanted to document everything. I wanted to tell everyone about everything. I wanted to let my spirit of adventure soar, and land
triumphant—there’s that word again—in a new land. I was blazing a new trail, going where no person (or at the
very least no rural Western New Yorker), had gone before, and goddamned if I
wasn’t going to remember ever minute of it.
I remember very little of it now. They say sleep is key in the conversion
of short-term to long-term memory.
Oh, hindsight.
Istanbul was beautiful. From the air, the city was a patchwork
that seemed to stretch for miles in all directions. The Mediterranean was the blue of happiness itself. From the airport… well, I didn’t see
Istanbul from the airport. The
international terminal in Istanbul is quite a bit bigger than Terminal 1 in
JFK, but no more inviting. After
an interminable walk from the arrival gate, I was greeted by no less than three
different, but to a foreign eye indistinguishable, lines, and virtually no
guidance as to which would safely get me to my connecting flight (I say
virtually because in fact there were signs, but not informative signs, and
people just milled about, occasionally hopping lines and all in all making
getting anywhere quite a miserable prospect).
I got lucky, though—my second choice
proved to be the correct one. Who
knows how long I might’ve stood there in my first—incorrect—choice of line, queuing
like a good American, while all around me people milled, shuffled, and moved
forward for inexplicable reasons, speaking indecipherable words that brought to
mind images of Babel to me, but seemed to get them where they needed to
go. But I didn’t just stand there
(for too long). I made the correct
choice (second). Once again
American guts and ingenuity were proving unstoppable. I was on my way.
Next stop: 6 more hours of layover in a
foreign airport that I couldn’t leave.
In popular culture, air travel is
romantic. It’s an adventure. Even when someone gets snowed in, or
misses a flight, sleeping in an airport is not that bad because it leads to the
inevitable reward of the storyline.
People who sleep in airports are atoning for a relationship sin, earning
or re-earning a loved one’s trust, enduring love’s purgatory until they are
once again reunited with their soul mate—or at the very least that fictional
person designated in this particular fiction as their one true…whatever. In short these people are
questing. And it’s noble, and it’s
romantic, and it’s even somewhat glamorous.
Real airports are a wasteland of
trackless granite floors, hard metal chairs bolted to the floors, and armrests
that don’t go away and so prevent any kind of productive sleeping. For about half my layover, I wandered
these trackless wastes, alone, tired, not really hungry because I’d eaten an
overpriced sandwich in a restaurant that promised free wifi but delivered only
a token facsimile, and just plain bored.
There are only so many times one can read the departing flights boards,
especially when they only put up flights two hours ahead of time. When you can’t even see your own flight
number, all interest and novelty is really taken out of the endeavor.
I wandered the barren departure
terminals, with their frozen empty landscapes of so-called chairs, counters
where once smiling flight attendants had stood, and the inevitable pillars
which prevented one from seeing the counter from the seat one is always forced
to take, far from the gate, because one got bored and wandered off for just a
minute, only to return and find the waiting area completely full of
people. I sat in empty rows of
chairs, half-convinced myself I would sleep for a while, but then ended up
wandering on after mere minutes. I
tried, time after time, to find reliable, free internet, trekking up and down
the hills and valleys, wandering all the various caverns extant in the local
geography.
I got to know the well-trammeled terrain
of that airport quite well—the forests of pillars, the resplendent but
far-flung fountains, twinkling oases in this desert of wifi capabilities. It was indeed purgatory, of a sort, but
there was no carefully choreographed romantic reunion at the end of my little
interlude. Oh, how I lamented my
decision to ever leave my beloved country, with its surfeit onfStarbucks and
Starbucks derivatives who fed off our great nation’s desire to appear hip,
cutting-edge, and different by doing what everyone else in the industry does at
exactly the same capacity. Some
would call it mediocre; at that moment, I called it dependable.
Instead, more wandering, more desert.
Until I happened upon a place that
changed my (travelling) life forever.
There, at the far end of the airport,
shining like a golden ray of hope, I saw it. Like the gates of heaven, those doors opened for me, and I
was saved. I’ll never truly know
if I was, by virtue of my international boarding pass, actually allowed in that
Turkish Airlines lounge, but whether or not I had the correct ticket, I had the
correct attitude. Yes, once again,
America wins.
You see, I was unsure: was I allowed in? was I not? But I had a goal.
Just out of sight, I knew there was another world waiting. I didn’t quite know what was in that
world, but I knew it had to be better than where I was, and I wanted in. Turnstiles. I hate turnstiles.
But that was it. Standing
in my way was a turnstile, and a little red line that would scan the code on my
boarding pass, and tell me whether I was worthy. Surely my time in purgatory—tired, far from home and my
loved ones—was enough to grant me surfeit from the desolation surrounding
me. I tried it. And when it didn’t work, I tried it
again. Finally after a third try,
with my obstinate refusal to go away, the man at the desk let me pass.
And it was glorious: clean bathrooms,
free wifi, free food, an entire room devoted to giant reclining chairs and
relaxing music.
Once again, America wins. When all else fails, act like you
belong there. Invariably you’ll
find that you do.
