A rather difficult day. I had a lot of work, but it was a sunny day and I went with the GF to Kadikoy. We waited for the ferry at Karakoy, didn’t realise it was the one moored at the pier, and missed it as chugged away. The next one was only 20 minutes away, but it was frustrating nonetheless. Trying to make the best of it, we crossed the Galata Bridge and waited for the ferry at Eminonu, and had the pleasure of a very large ferry docking very clumsily indeed.
Kadikoy was quite quiet on a lockdown Sunday, but we discovered that the cafe we always go to was open. The GF went to order and was told they were not permitted to give takeaways, but we could order a delivery. Rather excessive, but we walked over to a park, picked a building with a prominent number, and used its address to order using a delivery app. As we waited, we watched two cats staring at each other and growling softly, and it was curious to see how everyone around them behaved. All the other cats watched, very still and quiet, unblinking. All the people looked very uneasy indeed, and several stopped and tried to hustle one or the other away. We walked between the two at one point and it was like walking past the basilisk stares in the Endless Story. Eventually one cat attacked and chased the other out of its territory, the two rolling over the grass, claws flashing.
Our coffee arrived, we drank it in the park.
We walked on further, roughly south-east, along bits of the famous Baghdad street (quiet, wide, empty and very spaced out) and then through tree-lined blocks of flats. We eventually arrived at our destination, an art exhibition, to find a heap of rubble.
Next door a man and a woman and an unknown number of children were sitting on a doorstep and they called out to us. They were amongst those involved in the exhibition, and explained that the building had been demolished last Monday – the day after the day we had actually planned to come. Well, the point of the exhibition was that it took place in a building that was going to be demolished, but it was still startling.
We walked a bit and then took a cab to the ferry port and, in fact, were stopped by police for the first time to have our passports checked on a lockdown day. Maybe they only do this for vehicles, assuming that anyone on foot is likely not far from home.
We took a ferry back in exceptionally beautiful light – well, not exceptional for Istanbul – and peeped into the flat. This was rather discouraging, much like most of the rest of the day, so we eventually gave up and returned. And here I am, now, trying desperately to catch up on work and feeling really quite as though things are slipping out of my hand, or that forward momentum, of going full pelt, is no longer enough to keep me on the tightrope I am trying to walk.