On the Road Between Kazan and Ankara

Fields on the edge of Kazan from Osmanlı Caddesi. September 2019.

On the minibus back from Kazan today, the driver pulled off to the shoulder to pick up two young men. They were carrying small suitcases and asked, Does this go to the otogar? The driver shrugged and said, no, but you can get to the metro from here and that will take you to the otogar. They boarded, passed their fare off to the driver, and sat down. About 20 minutes later, one of the men called out from the back, Captain, is there more until the otogar? The driver replied, Look, this doesn't go to the otogar, you'll have to get out at the metro and that'll take you there. The young man leaned back in his seat.

Screenshot of Google Maps, showing (Kahraman)Kazan and Ankara. September 2019.

The driver pulled over at OSTİM and quickly explained that they would need to take the metro from here to the bus station. I slipped ahead of them, into the station, and onto the platform. They approached me a few minutes later, maybe recognizing me from the minibus or maybe just approaching the first person they thought might help. Is this the direction for the metro? Yes, I said, trying to hold my Turkish as fluently as I could, you'll take this metro to Kızılay and then transfer from there.

As we took the metro in from OSTİM, I thought about the ways that we learn to navigate about the world and the limits of the labels that we use to place ourselves. Where are you from is invariably one of the first questions you encounter while moving through the country - in my case, it's often an experience of trying to narrate a family's connection to this place to make myself relatively legible to the person with whom I happen to be speaking. But I was thinking today about how it's not just an explanation of nereliyim - it's also a matter of our tacit assumptions about how one place is connected to another. These men likely live just kilometers outside of Ankara and yet negotiating the process of hailing a minibus and taking it into the city was perhaps more foreign to them than it was to me.

Phrased slightly differently, a reminder that physical proximity doesn't necessarily equate to awareness - that people can be near and yet live worlds apart.

They likely would have made it from the metro to the Ankaray, but I walked them down the stairs. They never asked me where I was from, although one of them asked me politely to repeat myself; I never asked them where they were from nor where they were going. All I knew is that their bus was at 7:00 pm tonight. Yolunuz açık olsun, I said as they boarded the train.