This morning I had to go to the Pakistani consulate to get a legal document attested, needed urgently back home. Knowing that there would be red tape I called in advance to ask what was needed, wrote down the list, collected everything, and left. I took the metro, my first foray onto public transport, and while it was easy and quick, it suffered from very poorly labelled exits, so it was a real challenge trying to work out which exit (out of several a few hundred metres and several escalators apart) to take.
Anyway, I found the consulate and took my number but was ushered to the front of the queue as an unaccompanied woman. This consulate, unsurprisingly, deals with a lot of illegal immigrants, and some of these clustered about me, clearly wondering what a woman alone was doing. Thereafter, as I spoke to the consulate official, the one closest to me would listen intently, turn around and convey it to the others, and so a murmur would pass down the queue — ‘she lives in London…’ ‘document attested’…. ‘she has her ID card…’.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, here I was informed that I needed more documents, all easy enough to procure but it would have been nice to have known in advance. Plus I had to deposit the fee in the consulate bank account, but since I was not resident in Turkey I could only do this at Habib Bank, a Pakistani bank, located elsewhere in the city. So, no attestation today, and when I returned tomorrow I would have to bring fresh prints of the documents as the date would have changed.
Off I went to find Habib Bank, again losing a good ten minutes wondering which exit to take out of the station, and choosing the wrong one. The station here is along the side of non-Muslim graveyard and while one couldn’t go or see inside, the gates were variously inscribed with Armenian, Cyrillic, Latin or Hebrew script. Less attractively, in the distance rose a building emblazoned ‘Trump Tower’.
At the bank it turned out no one spoke English or Urdu, odd for a bank which presumably caters exclusively to Pakistanis. Another mild hitch here, as they refused to accept the $20 payment in Turkish liras. Luckily, I did have dollars on me, but this requirement, as well as the amount (the Pakistani High Commission in London charges only £5 for this service) so that was that. Then I returned, as I will have to compile the additional documents and have them printed out, so there was no going back to the consulate before its mid-afternoon closure.