Istanbul, day 5: #thestandingman

The Taksim demonstations have taken a new turn; yesterday a man walked up to Taksim square and took a stand and remained in this position. More people followed his expression of non violence. Nevertheless, the police arrested all but one of these protesters- for what? Standing still? As the Prime Minister is threatening to bring armed forces to end the demonstrations - and ignoring the international criticism concerning the abuse of police power against the protestors, how far is he willing to go is the question that remains to answered.

Today, as we were walking up Istiklal Street towards Taksim square we passed several of these Standing Men (and Women), standing still, reading a book:

Day 3 in Istanbul riots, photos from our day outside demonstration

We were having a drink in a cafe, when the tear gas shells started blasting - and we were rushed inside and placed behind a glass window - watching clouds of tear gas pass.

Later we sat down for shisha in Tophane - demonstrators were running towards us, the sound of gas shells being fired and clouds of tear gas pass.

From our shisha place, while clouds of tear gas hovered past us, awnings (markiser) rolled out and sprayed water to keep the gas from coming into the restaurant.

An improvised barricade in lower Istiklal street - hundreds of metres away from Taksim square. The street was filled with debris, broken tiles and cobble stones.

Day 8: Riots and Teargas. Istanbul, Taksim.

Fascism. The only word I can make out from the demonstraters ralleys. Maybe it was a bad idea going Istiklal street - the street that ends in Taksim square, or maybe it was a terribly bad idea to do it. All I wanted was to have dinner, and before we knew it we were floating in a stream of people walking upwards towards Taksim square. I am not going to write about the political situation or what they are demonstrating against. I can only tell what we saw, so here follows my accounts of what is called the biggest and most violent demonstration against the Turkish prime minister.

People around us are furious, shouting paroles and waving fists, wearing helmets, gas masks, face masks. Most of the people are walking upwards towards the square, some of that come walking againt us, have running eyes and covering their eyes and noses. Someone is handing out face maks to strangers. There is an air of solidarity and anger and the noise in the street echos the frustration of thousands of people standing up for what they believe in.


The demonstrators starts booing. The smell of teargas and an itching sensation awakes in my throat; the familar smell. The crowd is applausing while a passed out demonstrator is carried on the shoulders of his comrades down the street. A hero to the present. An enemy of the state. There are two things that fascinates me about this demonstration: 1) the anarchistic organisation; flocks of people in helmets and gas masks move upwards, only to come back again few moments later, choked, in tears, some manic and with froth around their mouths. Some throw up. New batallions move up, and this almost organic dynamic of this spontanious group, stands as a manifest of solidarity and mass mobilistation. 2) Looking around at the demonstrators, people of all ages are representate; old men in face masks, women in head scarves, young ones in dread locks.

Nevertheless; Since our initial plan for this evening excursion was .. supper, we leave the demonstation for a while and go into a nearby side way and sit at what turned out to be a pro-Fascist restaurant run by som Kurdish people. At first we sit outside on the pavement, but as more and more rioters come running past us, they shuffle us in and hastly move all the furniture in as well. One of the men working there tries to explain the background for the demonstrations in very broken English. The only sensible thing I can make out of it is that he seems to have a problem against 15 year old girls being drunk outside the streets at five o-clock in the morning. He looked back at us for moral support, but we said we used to be one of those and he looks confused and goes away for a while. The volume of the music inside the restaurant is gradually turned up as the shouting outside gets louder. People who have been exposed to tear gas pass us, tears running, coughing. The Kurdish bloke complains about the nuisance.

We haste through a crap salad and köfte (and a 0,7l Efes beer - my mistaken order of a small glass). We go back down towards the main street, but before we reach it, a tear gas cannister flies ahead of us, only metres away, and someone is either trying to exstinguish it or kick it back towards the riot police. At first we contemplate going back, but the stinging eyes and coughing becomes unberable and we rush in the general direction to catch a breath. My friend is trying to wash the tear gas out of her eyes, and people are beginning to make haste down this parallel street to Istiklal. Between the buildings in the side street, I spot riot police - with helmets, sheilds and batons marching in a line, pushing the demonstrators back down. I sort of panic and we run somewhere where the crowd is running. Lost in the maze of winding streets and stairs of Galata, we once again end up back at Istikal, where the riot police is beginning to line up again a little further down the street. And we begin to run again, down a steep street. All the doors are locked, there are no cafees, no where to hide, should they come after us. We hurry down, to the bottom of the hill.

I am spent. A week in Kabul and now only metres away from the barricades in Gezim park. I buy a chocolate ice cream. Clouds of tear gas is still howering about the city. We have a sit down and a post-riot smoke at the square under Galata tower, demonstrators in helmets, gas masks are sitting all over the place. All the restaurants and cafees have taken their furniture inside. As we walk homewards, fully spent and exhausted, a small metall hammering is building up, sympathisers are banging pots and pans. Further down the street, more hammering is being added onto that, as just as we reach home, a local boy stops us, we ask him what the sounds are for. It's a Jungle telegraph- the Police squads are moving further down Istiklal.

Kabul day 6: Exploding bodies - fragments of flesh

The vision of exploding bodies has stayed with me for some days now, and the morbid affixiation on the state of mind that enables anyone to inflict so much pain on himself and others, lures in the back of my conscience. Someone in the office was less than 50metres away from the car bomb when it detonated; the blast sprayed the perimeter with blood and fragmented human body pieces. He was there with his children who all got covered in this sanguine horror. Some people around the detonation area started collecting whatever parts of bodies they were able to collect - into plastic bags and tried to bury them in the ground there. Other people reacted to this reaction - refusing to let their neighbourhood become a cemetary. He tells me prior to the attack on the Supreme Court, several warnings had been ushered from Taliban that they would revenge the death sentence of a holy warrior. Neighbouring to the court are living areas with high rise house complex' - and worried residents had asked for the local authorities to close off the road. This was rejected - and citizens were left worried, threatened and unprotected. And surely, not long after, covered in disintegrated human bodies.

Day 4: Suicide bombers.

A man from the Norwegian Embassy just rang me to confirm I am alive. A VBIED exploded outside the Supreme Court in Kabul just as people were leaving work. Now, I presume in places like this, upon arrival - everyone is given a security briefing about the threats and risks in the area. Let me give you a quick run through of key terms in our security plan from the risk analysis chapter: IED (Improvised Explosive Devices); BBIED (Body Borne Improvise Explosive Devices); VBIED (Vehicle Borne Improvised Explosive Devices); and UXO (Unexploded Ordinance - i.e. mines and such). The way I see it, if you're not working in or for or with the government or the military, it is just a terrible, terrible bad luck to be where it happens when it happens. Yesterday's attack on the military compund near the airport, cost the lives of the two Holy BBIED's and seven more were shot by special forces. How holy are you when you blow yourself up at a highly protected military area?


One of my collegues lives not too far from the airport and said she had heard the explosion. Just the idea of waking up to the sound of two human beings exploding is unreal, almost absurd (in a non-comical kind, of course). Exploding bodies of their own free will - or, at least, within the bounds of a will that a deranged individual can have. I cannot find anything in me that can understand what drives a person to do this?

This morning on my drive over to work, we drove past a grafitti; Running letters sprayed on a brick wall said "Yankees Go Home". Ten years of war must give whomever sprayed that the right to do so. On my way home, I stopped by a supermarket to get dinner, and while shopping for bread, the bread selling boy said he thought I was in the military. NO! I almost shouted, by God, no; I'm not that brave. Or crazy. Later that day, I spoke with an American, she said that our efforts for making peace here are historical. Well, as a humanitarian organisation, our job is not to make peace, but to make societies resilient to conflict and to pick up the rubbles and try to glue the fragments of a society together. It is like a jigsaw puzzle with no matching pieces. The iman blows in his microphone to make sure it is on. It is.

On the minute I received the text from our Security Officer about the blast, I got up and closed the glass door to our terrace as a sheer reaction. As if the glass door could offer any protection, nevertheless - I needed to shut the city out for a while. Calls and sms's updating me on the situation - Taliban claimed responsibility, sixteen lives taken.

I have opened the door again. The city is ever so busy and honking cars and the goat next door are making their usual sounds. But, I put on my head scarf and I sit on the floor by the open door. The evening prayers call to the distance - the echo fills the space between the wedding hall and as far as it carries in any direction. It has an, either lonely or heartbroken feel- I can't decide. The sun sets over Kabul, my coffee is cold now, but I had a solid reality check this evening.

Kabul day 2: A roll in the night and the Ring of Steel.

Going out for dinner is the only time for me to see the city, as most of the time is spent confined in compunds. This is also the only time for me to experience anything noteworthy (hopefully). The drive over starts before nightfall, but it is the return in the dark that fascinates me. It is in the night that all things stand out and draws shape from whatever random source of light that may be near. What lurkes in the dark, sleeps in the day.

Kabul near dusk is busy. We drive past restaurants, mosques, shops, tailors, universities, government buildings, people are everyhwere. A zoo, I see a big camel. Kabul river opens the city for a while and an unuttered beauty and faint recollections of greatness is painted in water colour in the shallow river. We pass the place where the last attack on Kabul happened; a group of terrorists wanted to attack the Border Police in January, but did not manage to get through the security perimeter. So what they did instead was to go for the Traffic Police next door. Plan B sucks, could they not have parked illegally and refused to pay the fine instead?
The restaurant, Le Jardin, is accordingly the best protected restaurant in the city. Our driver stops in a dead end street. A high metal gate opens schreechingly, and we enter something that looks like a mine field. Through another steel door, we are searched with metal detectors before we can enter the last door (metal detectors remind me that if I should ever feel lonely, I should stuff my bra with coins and head back there). By the side of it there is a sign saying "no weapons"; Good to know, in case we for a moment should forget where we are. High walls encircles a garden, tables and chairs clutter the grass randomly. The cuisine is French-ish, but nice, slightly overpriced, but in this garden of no weapons and peace, I guess more than the price of smoked salmon is included in the sum at the bill.
We leave in the nightfall and the city is transformed yet again. Trolleys of fruits offer moments of lights in the otherwise dark drive. The lonely light of a spotlight, turns mountains of watermelons into cactai in a black desert, mangos turn into towers of gold. Kabul is surrounded by high rise constructions - during day time they are invisible, camouflaged in the pale mountains, but after dusk they rise up and thousands of windows light up the backdrop of the city.
It is a terrible realisation for my perception of my own humanity, but for any experienced traveller it is easy, too easy, to brush away beggars. Right before entering a Ring of Steel checkpoint, a woman, possibly old, cloaked in a blue frilly burka knocks on our window. Bent double over a walking stick, cupping her wrinkled hand in the air for it to be filled with some change. In return, not even percievable sympathy blows through her and we drive on.

Back home the Evening prayer has a sadness in it. A lonely iman tormented not by love for a woman, but for the absence of God, is lamenting the hardship of the mundane life to everyone within the reach of his voice. There is no escape from a heart broken priest with a microphone and a powerful speaker. I wish my life was that easy, however, I don't speak Arabic.

Day 1: Knights of Kabul

The smell of car pollution stuffs the house and my nose, to open a window would only let more air poisened with buzzling modernity into the heart, the house and my lungs. The cool evening air provides little freshness, and during the day under the burn of the boiling sun, a gasp of fresh air seems impossible to draw. Kabul. In a moment of clarity the idea seems too risky, but in the absence of emotional rationality - the possibility for adventure and perspecives overrode all other arguments my inner conscience might have. On the flight from Oslo to Istanbul, I remember pausing for a moment, searching myself - asking the question another part of me have dreaded asking since I signed on this task: am I too afraid? Question posed, deep breathing - but no echoing coherence in me. So off we go. The moment my feet exited the international terminal, Kabul, a sense of adventure filled me, and even under the layers of clothing and head scarf raising my body temperature way out of my comfort limits - the sense of being alive and about to have an experience that I will remember for the rest of my life, filled me like water in a stream; poised and ready. I get my security briefing in the compound I am staying. Any thread of fear is absent, I feel safe and worry free. These guardians of my safety is entrusted all my, well, life at the moment, and I feel fine.

The evening prayers call out from the mosque on the other side of the road. Beautifully - the echo pours out in the dark night that is poured in the bowl between the surrounding mountains like stale coffee in a dusty cup. Once over, only a few blissful seconds hang in the air like a cloud of swallows, before the unclear beats from a wedding in a wedding hall not so far from here. On our way in from the airport we saw many of them - massive complexes in bright lights, radiating hope and plans for the future. Based on what one have read in the news, one would think that massive funeral complexes would be more suitable. Passing these and getting closer to the city centre, streets are getting more crowded and busy - and some of the women wear burkas, men in loose clothes, giant watermelons from the north, Pakistani mangos. Buzzing and hustling. It strikes me: people live here too. Everyday life has a strange ability to make its claim no matter how insecure the situation may be.

Later at night we have pizza. The entrance of the restaurant is an anynomous gate across the street from the Iranian embassy. A face behind a small gittered hole sees us and lets us in. My collegue is body searched. We walk further in, and we leave our passports and id's in a small room before we pass through a security door. A beautiful garden unfolds. Expats sit in leisure, nipping at drinks, while 90's music is summing all over the lush greenery. We order pizzas, and life is good, given the circumstances. People live here, too. The world's small. I'm watching Thor as the guard outside is doing his graceful evening prayers.