Paul Theroux - The Great Railway Bazaar

But I needn't have bothered, for while the Lake Van Express was standing at Haydarpasa Station I spotted the dining car. I found my compartment, then went to the dining car for lunch and watched the activity on the platform. Groups of hippies, like small clans of tribesmen setting out for a baraza or new pastures, fought past soberly dressed Turkish families. Minutes later, Turks and hippies found themselves in the same third-class compartments, quarrelling over window seats. The steam locomotives, used by Turkish Railways for short runs, were being stoked at the platform; they poured soot over the boarding passengers and darkened the sky with smoke, giving the German station a German atmosphere.

It was pleasant to be eating, drinking, reading Little Dorrit, and moving east once again on a railway bazaar that would bring me to the shores of Turkey's largest lake. And I was reassured by what I saw of Turkish Railways: the train was long and solid, the sleeping car was newer than the wagon-lit on the Direct-Orient, the dining car had fresh flowers on the tables and was well stocked with wine and beer. It was three days to Lake Van, five to Teheran, and I was supremely comfortable. I went back to my compartment and propped myself at the window – a cool corner seat – and was lulled by the feel of Asia rumbling under the wheels.

We approached the coast and balanced there, on the eastern-most shore of the Sea of Marmara, stopping at the outlying towns of Kartal and Gebze (where Hannibal committed suicide) and then to the Gulf of Izmit, flecked with the last lighted eddies of sunset. It grew dark and we were inland, travelling towards Ankara. Our stops were briefer and less frequent, and at these stations little men in cloth caps, figures of discouragement, alighted from the train with roped bundles and, once clear of the stairs, dropped their bundles and looked for the next train. I watched them as we pulled out, taking the light with us, until the only visible thing about them were their cigarettes, bright from their impatient puffing. Most provincial stations had outdoor cafes, full of white chairs and tables and green floodlit trees. The people drinking in them are not travellers; they are locals who have come down to the station after dinner to spend the evening watching the trains go by. The Lake Van Express is an event for the cafe: as soon as we leave, the hulking fellow shifts in his seat and, pointing over his coffee cup, calls to the waiter in the white jacket, who is momentarily fixed into a posture of concentration by the express. He hears the man's voice and comes alive, patting the small towel on his forearm and starting towards the table, preparing to bow.

'Guten Abend.' There was a Turk at the door to my compartment. He did not speak English, he said, but he knew some German. He had spent a year assembling cars in Munich. He was sorry to bother me, but his friend had a few questions. His friend, an old man who spoke no language but his own, stood just behind him. They entered the compartment timidly; then the German-speaker started in: Why was I alone in the compartment? Where was I going? Why did I leave my wife behind? Did I like Turkey? Why was my hair so long? Was everyone's hair that long at home? The questions ceased. The old man had picked up Little Dorrit and was turning the pages, marvelling at the tiny print and weighing the 900-page volume in his hand.

I felt I had earned a right to ask them the same questions they had asked me, but I hesitated. They were fresh from the meal they'd had in their compartment and carried an aroma of sour vegetables into mine. They were eyeing my gin. Their fly buttons were undone, and now I could understand why these buttons were called 'Turkish medals' by British soldiers in the First World War. The old man kept moistening his finger with spittle and smearing it on my book.

Children's faces appeared at the door; one youngster began to cry, and my annoyance was complete. I asked for my book back and evicted them. I bolted the door and slept. In my dream I was trying to fly, pumping my arms against a stiff wind that held me like a kite as I tried to rise from the ground. But I remained skimming horizontally the way a coot moves across the water, flapping wildly, but dragging my toes. I had this dream several times a week for three months, but it took a lungful of opium in Vientiane to get me airborne.

There were only Turks in the de luxe sleeping car. So much for the traveller's truism that natives don't go first class. As if fearing contamination from the rest of the train, these Turks seldom left their couchettes and they never left the car itself. Each couchette was fitted with two narrow berths, and I spent some time speculating on how these berths were allotted. For example, next to me a saffron-faced man travelled with two fat women and two children. I saw them seated in a row on the lower berth during the day, but God alone knows what happened at night. None of the couchettes held fewer than four people and this crowding gave to the sleeping car the air of squalor in third class these travellers seemed anxious to avoid.

The German-speaking Turk described the rest of the train as schmoozy and made a face. But it was only in the schmoozy part that English was spoken. There, one saw tall fellows with pigtails and braids, and short-haired girls who, lingering near their boyfriends, had the look of pouting catamites. Gaunt wild-haired boys with shoulder bags and sunburned noses stood rocking in the corridors, and everyone had dirty feet. They grew filthier and more fatigued-looking as I moved down the cars, and at the very front of the train they might have passed for the unfortunate distant relatives of the much cleaner Turks who shared their compartments, munching bread, combing food out of their moustaches, and burping their babies. On the whole, the hippies ignored the Turks; they played guitars and harmonicas, held hands, and organized card games. Some simply lay on their seats lengthwise, hogging half the compartment, and humped under the astonished eyes of Turkish women who sat staring in dark yashmaks, their hands clasped between their knees. Occasionally, I saw an amorous pair leave their compartment hand in hand to go copulate in a toilet.

Most were on their way to India and Nepal, because

the wildest dreams of Kew are the facts of Khatman-

dhu, And the crimes of Clapham chaste in Martaban.

But the majority of them, going for the first time, had that look of frozen apprehension that is the mask on the face of an escapee. Indeed, I had no doubt that the teenaged girls who made up the bulk of these loose tribal groups would eventually appear on the notice boards of American consulates in Asia, in blurred snapshots or retouched high-school graduation pictures: missing person and have you seen this girl? These initiates had leaders who were instantly recognizable by the way they dressed: the faded dervish outfit, the ragged shoulder bag, the jewellery – earrings, amulets, bracelets, necklaces. Status derived solely from experience, and it was possible to tell from the ornaments alone – that jangling in the corridor – whose experience had made him the leader of his particular group. All in all, a social order familiar to the average Masai tribesman.

I tried to find out where they were going. It was not easy. They seldom ate in the dining car; they often slept; they were not allowed in the fastness of the Turks' de luxe. Some stood by the windows in the corridor, in the trancelike state the Turkish landscape induces in travellers. I sidled up to them and asked them their plans. One did not even turn around. He was a man of about thirty-five, with dusty hair, a T-shirt that read 'Moto-Guzzi', and a small gold earring in the lobe of his ear. I surmised that he had sold his motorcycle for a ticket to India. He held the windowsill and stared at the empty reddish yellow flatlands. In reply to my question he said softly, 'Pondicherry.'