Ahmet, I learned, was not just a ferry captain. He had actually owned one of these big ferry companies, but sold it a number of years ago. He was now semiretired. He had kept only one boat from the fleet—a vessel that originally was a fishing boat and had served as the first ferry in the early days of his business. “I could not bear to part with it,” he told me. “I take it out now and then for private trips up the Bosphorus. I had already booked one for today when Julian called. So my son took it out for me.”
We walked past the docks where the large public ferries waited, and past the large tourist boats. Alongside one of the docks was a long, shallow craft with ornate bow and stern decorations, an elaborate canopy and gunwales shining with gold gilt. “A replica of an imperial caïque,” said Ahmet. “For tourists.”
Eventually we arrived at an area where the slips held smaller vessels. Ahmet walked up to a modest white boat with blue trim. “Here it is,” he said, laughing. “My pride and joy.” It was a sturdy-looking tug-like boat. Near the prow was a small open-topped wheel house, and behind a small wood-and-glass partition were the control panel and wheel. A worn leather stool was placed behind the wheel. Wooden benches lined the stern, and a few seats ran behind the wheel house. The white and blue paint of the sides and floor was cracked, but clean. Old, but well cared for.
“It seems we have missed Yusuf. Oh well. Perhaps on your next visit I will be able to introduce you to my family,” said Ahmet as he untied the boat from the dock.
It did not take long for us to get out of the harbor into the open strait. We were moving slowly, but at this time of night it seemed as if everything was operating at such a leisurely speed. A large ferry with its lights twinkling churned toward the Asian shore, and smaller boats were off in the distance. The water felt unnaturally quiet. In the twilight I could see Istanbul stretching out from both shores—an elaborate quilt of mosques, palaces and other elegant buildings, interspersed with red-tiled roofs, apartment houses, palm trees, shops and cafés. We slipped under the Bosphorus Bridge and headed north. I could make out elaborate wooden houses, what Ahmet told me were yalis—summer homes of the rich—hanging over the water’s edge as if they were floating instead of anchored onshore. With every passing minute, the sky became a deeper blue, until the full moon looked like a giant pearl hanging before an inky pool. Its light bounced against the water, and Ahmet slowed the engine even further. I could feel the boat bob against the gentle rhythm of the current.
“It is special here, no?” said Ahmet. I nodded.
“It doesn’t seem quite real,” I said.
“But it’s so hard to say what is real, isn’t it?” Ahmet went on.
“I suppose.” This wasn’t the kind of thing I usually spent much time thinking about.
I walked to the stern of the boat and looked back at the disappearing city.
“Did you know,” continued Ahmet, “that a strait is not like a river? Water does not flow in one direction only.”
I turned around to look at Ahmet and shook my head.
“No,” said Ahmet. “Not like a river at all. Water is pulled in and out by ocean tides. Just as Europe is meeting Asia here, at this spot, the waters of two seas, the Marmara and the Black Sea, are coming together, mingling. And yet, even this is not exactly what it seems.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“There were marine scientists from England, Canada and Turkey studying this strait a few years ago,” Ahmet explained. “And you know what they discovered?” Ahmet had been facing ahead as he steered, but now he looked over his shoulder at me. I shrugged my shoulders and shook my head.
“At the very bottom of this strait, there runs an undersea river. Water, mud and sediment, heavier than the salt water above, flowing from the Marmara Sea into the Black Sea.”
“An underwater river?” I said. “How bizarre.”
“It makes you realize,” said Ahmet, “just how complicated things are. How things are seldom simply what they appear to be.”
I had moved around the boat and now joined Ahmet in a seat next to the wheel. We were both silent for several minutes. Then Ahmet tilted back in his seat.
“We have spent the better part of the day together,” Ahmet said thoughtfully. “But in truth we don’t know much of each other. Of my dear friend Julian’s relative, I know only this: you are an electrical engineer; you are married; you have a six-year-old son. But who are you really?”
I didn’t have an answer for that. Ahmet glanced at my blank expression and smiled.
“And it is no different with me,” he said. “I told you at dinner that I am a sixty-year-old business owner. That I am a widower with four grown sons. But do you really know me?”
“It is a place to start, I suppose,” I answered. “I mean, I could ask you more about your company or your sons.”
“But it would take us a long time to truly get to know one another, wouldn’t it?”
“Yes, I guess so.”
“That’s the way it usually is. But just imagine if we started our conversations with other things. What if I told you that for me life is on the water. Ever since I was a child, all I wanted to do was live and work on or near the water? My mother used to tell me that the only time I was really content as a baby was when she gave me a bath. Water, fishing, swimming. Boats, boats, boats. No doubt about what I wanted to do. When I am not on one of my boats, I always feel a strange sense of restlessness. Sometimes that was hard for my wife, for my sons, to deal with. But our best times were always together, on the seashore or on the boat. It’s as if that was where we could all be ourselves. I have always needed to be on the water—to think, to really understand the world and my life. It was on this same little boat that I decided that Kaniz was the woman I wanted to marry. It was here where I have made all my plans and all my biggest decisions.” Ahmet turned the wheel of the boat slightly. “I feel if told you that, you might really begin to understand me.”
“I guess most of what we understand about people is just the surface stuff,” I offered.
“Yes,” said Ahmet, nodding. “And that is a sad thing.” Ahmet was silent for a moment.
“But that is not the saddest thing,” he continued reflectively. “The saddest thing is that this is often all we understand about ourselves: that so often, we live our neighbor’s life, instead of our own.”
It was hard to tell how long we were actually on the Bosphorus. The phosphorescent water, the shimmering moon, the soothing hum of the engine made the journey seem like a dream, a moment out of time. But then Ahmet was turning the wheel and pointing at distant lights dotting the shore on the Asian side.
“Anadolu Kava
It didn’t take us long to dock the boat and then drive the little car that Ahmet had parked at the docks to his home in the village. The small stone house was nothing like the apartment that Ahmet kept in the city. Terra cotta tiles lined the floors, uneven plaster covered the walls, and the dark, rough timbers of the ceiling seemed to hold echoes from a distant past. Open shelves in the kitchen were lined with heavy crockery and brass cookware. Here and there were small bits of mosaic and brightly colored glass, but the woven window coverings and faded spreads on the furniture had the muted shades of time. Ahmet carried my backpack into a tiny room. He pointed to the small bed, no larger than a twin, its hand-carved frame pushed against the wall.
“The bed in which I slept with my two brothers,” Ahmet laughed. He put my knapsack at the foot of the bed, and then led me back to the living room. “Shall we sit outside for just a bit?” he asked.