A Ride With Kemal, The Mad Turkish Cab Driver

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N ISTANBUL, THE CABS rule the road. There are dense flocks of them blocked up four and five deep every few hundred yards on all of the roads, large and small.

Getting one is easy - just stand on the side of the street and wave your arms. The five or so that spot you will gladly cross three lanes of packed traffic within a thirty foot distance - cutting off buses, cars, and trucks alike without discrimination - to give you the ride of your life.

On this particular evening, there are six of us, so we need two cabs. We flag them down, give them our destination, and split into two groups. Ours is the lead cab, and I take the front seat. Before the door is closed, the driver slams on the accelerator and peels off into the dense traffic. The other cab passes us.

I know we're in for a good time.

I'm even more convinced when our driver starts to sing - "NnnnhhNNnn-lai-lai, nnNNhnn-nn-lai." It's a chant-hum, in typical middle-eastern minor key with flourishes, here and there.

"You like Turkish song?" he asks, turning to me with a grin. Two busses and a handful of cars narrowly avoid a pileup just in front.

It's time to go into nirvana zone. I turn back with my own grin: "Sure!"

"Ah." He is pleased and hunches over the wheel momentarily, targeting the traffic ahead.

Abruptly, he swivels around to face the three suddenly-startled faces seated in the back: "Where are you from?" he demands. They answer quickly and implore him to watch the mayhem in front of the car. "Ha," he turns to me with that huge grin, again. "America! That is good!" Then nonchalantly slips off the pavement to pass a set of traffic - missing work barriers and door-handles by fractions of millimeters and honking all the way. He forces his way back into traffic when the barriers close in.

"NnnnhhNNnn-lai-lai, nnNNhnn-nn-lai."

He turns back to me and waves an arm in the air, singing louder: "Hai diddlydee dee dum diddly hmmm-mMMmm-mmm."

Ok. I have to have a picture. I dig out the camera, although there are faint protests from the rear seat that I am taking his attention off the road.

"No, no!" he exclaims, swerving to avoid pedestrians. "I am very good driver!" Yes, we have to agree, he is very good driver. He grins and I snap a few frames. The mayhem is building, again, so he goes back to the wheel, squeezes a place between a bus and two other cars then returns to me, singing with arm raised, again, so I can snap a few more frames.

Perfect.

We are now over the Atatúrk Koprúsú bridge and moving through the congestion in Taxsim Square. Cars, busses, and trucks are jockeying in an insane random pattern that I can only characterize as a gas in a state of excitation. Except the molecular vehicles are somehow not colliding. The matrix of real-time calculations of vector and velocity is mind-boggling. Several times I think we're going to rip off the corner of another car or taxi or get crunched by a bus, or squeezed between a couple of trucks, but the proper amount of brake, gas, steerage, brazenness, and a modicum of passenger shifting get us through the cloud, somehow.

The taxis seem to be the more excited vehicle-molecules, I note.

"You sing song, now," he demands.

I'm taken a little off guard, but I come up with something: "Uh. 'Hey there, MAAama like the way MOVE, gonna MAKE you sweat gonna make you groo-oove.'"

Ok, maybe it's not appropriate, but it's what comes to mind. He grins at me, expectantly, and raises his eyebrows.

I'm committed, now. I finish the cadence: "Dah da-da-DA-dah DAAAAI dah, DAAAI dah dahdly DA-daahn-dahnnnnn."

He's still grinning without recognition. He wonders if I am done. I most assuredly am. Sensing this, he shrugs his shoulders and turns back to study the unfolding traffic, ahead.

"NnnnhhNNnn-lai-lai, nnNNhnn-nn-lai..." Apparently I haven't impressed.

I shift to anthropologist mode. "What kind of music are you singing?" I ask.

"Sennat," he replies, "Sennat music." "You like?"

Oh, yes. Is it religious? Tribal? Wedding song?

"No! Drinking music!!"

"Ah!" we all sing out. Things are much clearer, now.

Next, we get to a parkway, where the traffic is more reasonable - both in terms of congestion and a more laminar traffic flow. We still zip around a couple of slowpokes only doing 120 kilometers per hour.

"I am strong man!" he declares, abruptly. Four sets of eyebrows raise, expectantly.

"I am strong man! Three boys - three boys first, then one girl. I am strong man!" he confirms with a proud nod. That's great. "You have children?" he asks me. No, I respond.

"But you are married?" he says non-plussed.

Yes, married before - children then, not this time.

"Ah!" he responds. That seems to satisfy him.

Two cabs ahead and one to the side are playing chariot race - not quite banging into each other, but jockeying strongly for position. They do not suspect our driver coming up behind them, hungry for coup. He roars up on one, slams the brakes, honks, then slips in front of the cab to the side, cutting him off.

We lurch like dice in a cup, obeying Newton's second law of motion in various permutations. One cab down.

"In all cultures, everyone wants," he continues, but then hesitates and fumbles for words "for strong man to be strong, boys, or if girls to be shmmllimum." We can't quite make out that last word.

"For boys to be??"

"Strong man. All cultures for boys to be shhrzzzl and if girls are shmllimum." We're still not quite getting it.

"For boys to be strong? And girls to be pretty?" Mary offers from the back seat and he shrugs a non-committed acknowledgement.

I'm not sure. I think it has something to do with birth order.

Our driver isn't paying attention, anymore. The two remaining cabs ahead have shifted positions twice and he's watching them move like a cat watches a bug. At the next shift, he stomps on the gas pedal to exploit an unguarded moment of weakness - shoots the gap between them, then slams on the brakes a whisker's width behind the lead's rear bumper, and finally hooks to cut off the passed cab, laying on the horn in the late stages of the maneuver. I'm beginning to recognize the technique.

He suddenly squeals to a stop as a bus pulls out from the left. The defeated cab bumps us, lightly. It's the other half of our group, we realize - they must be having a wonderful adventure of their own. We'll have to compare notes, in either this life or the next. Our driver smiles and guns the gas, again, now intent on scalping the lead cab. Two down.

"What's your name?" I ask. I'd like to know everyone I'm going to die with, and he's the only unknown.

"Kemal Ihsan!" he smiles back - "Ihsan. Means 'Grace of God'!" So far, everything is making perfect sense.

"You know, this is not my first job?"

"No?"

"No, only for night. During day, I drive for..."

A couple of zigs and another zag and another screeching stop. A bus stopped in the middle of the intersection opens its door and a woman casually gets off on the inside lane. She walks alongside and then behind the bus, in front of us. Kemal honks and crowds her off the road, then accelerates to the back of the bus and slams the brakes, again. We lurch accordingly.

".. I drive for - how do you say - medicine.."

"Deliveries?" we wonder.

"No, no. With doctors and siren..."

"AMBULANCE???!!!" we shout, incredulously.

"Yes! Yes, ambulance! Here! I show you," and he fumbles around in his wallet, temporarily ignoring the traffic which has picked up again, and is causing an impatient cacaphony of honking behind us. He produces an ambulance driver's ID card. His picture is on it.

"Get outta here!" we cry. We are totally amazed and flummoxed. I start wondering about conflict of interest points...

"Oh, yes, yes!" he confirms. "I drive ten hours during day, then drive cab all hours at night."

"And you have four children!" I exclaim.

He doesn't take the bait - just replies seriously, "Oh, yes. Yes," and turns back to the road.

HAT HAPPENS NEXT takes us from the plane of the merely bizarre to the hyperspace of the truly surreal. Our other party's cab has passed us, again, having caught Kemal unawares, and now we are intersecting with another parkway, via an onramp. That parkway is at a dead standstill - traffic blocked up as far as the eye can see.

We're going to be stuck for a while. Or, so it seems.

The cabbie ahead pulls over on the left shoulder, looks behind, and then ... backs down an empty onramp on our left, leading from some other road we don't see. Kemal slides our cab over, looks back over his shoulder, and follows suit. We are now zipping backwards the wrong way down a parkway onramp about thirty miles an hour, effectively turning it into an impromptu offramp.

I bend my head way forward and murmur, "Ok. We are all going to die, now," and wait for the inevitable crash. Miraculously, it doesn't come. Bless Kemal Ihsan's status with Allah.

Now, on the surface road, traffic has resumed the normal mayhem. Kemal is no longer singing - instead, he's tapping out rhythms on the dash, arms extended through the spokes of the steering wheel. He turns and grins, nodding his head with eyebrows raised.

My head's back up, my eyes are clear, the air is fresh, and life is still good.

I grin back and try to emulate the rhythm on my part of the dashboard-drumset. I don't quite get it, even though I have a long history of dashboard and table-top drumming. He demonstrates again, and I note he's using his fingers for accent rolls and the syncopation is tricky. I try again - closer, but I can't duplicate the rolls.

"I play drums, sometimes - in club, at night!" he relates. Kemal Ihsan is a truly versatile guy.

Ahead, our other cab has passed through a controlled intersection with a light that has now changed. Pedestrians are in the crosswalk. Kemal jams on the brakes just in time to fluff the crease in the closest pedestrian's pants, who continues on, unperturbed. Kemal honks and inches forward, dividing the pedestrians like a cabbie Moses through the Pedestrian Sea, until most of them are now passing behind instead of in front of us. The other cab is still ahead. As soon as we are clear of pedestrians, Kemal nonchalantly runs the red and catches up.

Meanwhile, I'm challenged from the back seat gallery, who know my table-tapping history - surely I can demonstrate something respectable.

Sure. I rap out the solo from Wipeout, getting the offbeats right, but I haven't done this in a while and the last bar isn't even. Kemal is a connoisure and he notices. "Aahhh, ahhh.." he remonstrates with a finger shake. I just can't impress, tonight.

We're getting close to our destination, somehow having survived to this point. The lead cab takes a side street to the right - Kemal stomps the brakes, we all lurch forward. He studies the other cab's receding rear bumper for a moment, shakes his head and stomps the gas. We all lurch backward. "That driver is very bad driver," he says. We're in no position to disagree.

He whips a left across a median and then brazens out a game of chicken with trucks, busses, and other cars crossing the oncoming two-laner, honking his horn and alternately stomping the brakes and gas. We are through, and we recognize the street, the Migros supermarket, another little store, and finally the gate to our dinner host's apartment.

And, we are here!

The other cab pulls up behind as we get out, the rear passengers obviously shaken. Otto, on the other hand, has been sleeping in the front seat the entire trip and springs out perfectly relaxed. We're not sure if he actually needed the nap, or if he's discovered a clever defense mechanism.

Fifteen million Turkish Lira each cab. Chump change. We pay and are grateful to Allah for the privilege. Kemal and the other driver take it with a big smile, jump back in their respective chariots and race away.

"NnnnhhNNnn-lai-lai, nnNNhnn-nn-lai."

There are many songs to be sung, many dashboards to be drummed on the streets of Istanbul. Many passengers to deliver.

Kemal Ihsan is just one story, and a good driver. We recommend him highly.

Scribo, ergo sum.

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A Ride With Kemal, The Mad Turkish Cab Driver

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