Driving. Driving or riding in a car in Turkey is an experience everyone should try before they die, whether or not it brings the time of the shucking of the mortal coil closer. It is an exhilarating feeling, to know that at any point in time there is nothing between you and a pine box but a babbling Turkish man behind the wheel of a Mini-Bus.
Our days begin, bleary-eyed and hungry, with the chomping at the bit of our beloved driver, Hidiyet. He revs the engine of our dangerously crowded bus with gumption that would put any high schooler to shame, excited to pop the clutch of his steed and jerk forward towards the sun. Hidiyet is a dingo of a man, with a mischievous grin on his face as he yells his notorious battle cry of “OPPS! OPPS!” at any given opportunity. Whether it be a car cutting him off with a finger’s breadth to spare, or while navigating a switch back mountain with the sure footedness of a screaming goat, his famous motto is undoubtedly climbing his airway to burst free. He has discovered how to make a motorcycle backfire, cackling as he makes us jump as we walk home late at night by simulating a firefight. He smokes as though he and the exhaust pipe have a bet, with a Lark cigarette between his lips even as he doggy paddles with us in the Mediterranean.
While we often rue his cry of “OPPS,” and shut our eyes as he backs the whale of an automobile up a road next to a hundred foot drop, Hidiyet is our dad. He has never failed to make us laugh with his off key singing, or coax every last bit of horse power out of the bus when he could just as soon make us get out and push. He daily forgets that we aren’t His penchant for popping into my pictures, unsolicited, has ruined many a sunset and given me a portrait of two wild, laughing eyes, a tangle of grey hair, and his ever present cigarette between his gnarled fingers.
