It had rained all or part of every day we’d been in Europe—hopefully, the gateway to the East, Istanbul, would have some sunshine for us.
The rain finally did end; it began to snow. For some of the afternoon and into the evening, that consistently gray landscape was slowly but surely whitening with falling snow. It looked so cold outside. I sure hoped Istanbul was far enough south that we wouldn’t have to worry about snow. I consoled myself by thinking about all the sheepskin coats we would buy in India. We would have plenty of furs to protect us from any degree of chill—and plenty of money to put in our pockets, which would also shield us from the cold.
As we turned in, we all talked about Istanbul. Incredible, we thought, the gateway to the East, the jumping-off point of the Crusades. Historic Paris was different from anything I had ever experienced—it had been the thrill of my lifetime. But now we would be going even further back in time, to the land of warriors of old and the sultans of the desert.
It seemed we had no sooner fallen asleep when we heard that familiar, “Attention! Attention! Messieurs and Mademoiselles, passport inspection.” It was three o’clock in the morning. I could hear the train puffing outside the window; the metal beast was impatient. It didn’t want to stop; it wanted to run. I could feel that restlessness vibrating in the compartment. Our new conductor agreed; he wanted to make this border stop a quick one. I was impressed with Doug’s ability to stay asleep while he found his passport and passed it to the conductor without opening his eyes. As I lay there waiting for the conductor to return with our passports, I did wonder if we had taken the prospect of last night’s calamity happening again seriously enough. This was a Russian territorial partner; we were in the grasp of the Communist empire.
My worry was not unfounded; whatever last night was, this was starting to feel much worse. Moments later numerous guards, conductors and even passengers were crowding into our compartment and yelling at us to get up and follow them. They took Doug and me out onto the platform. There was no negotiating. This was rough; no one was speaking English, and there were many more guards coming from around the corner, all with machine guns. I watched our conductor as all this was happening. He was quiet and showed no emotion. Some passengers tried to come out onto the platform, but a few guards pushed them back, with everyone yelling in multiple languages. The guard who looked to be in charge was talking on a hand-held radio device, I assume to his superiors. He kept saying what sounded like “American CIA.” That may have been my imagination. As he talked he pointed towards the station house. I looked inside and saw bars on the window—and in a dark corner of the room what looked like bars from the floor up to the ceiling. Was their next move to put us behind bars? The border guards had an entrance far down the line from the station door entrance. I muttered to myself, This is it, and it is bad. We are in Bulgaria; these guys are probably meaner than the Russian guards. This is a dark country; not good. I bet Bulgarians don’t even like other Bulgarians, let alone foreigners. The one guard kept on saying, “Net visa, net visa!” I wondered what the word for spy was. Had he said it many times already?
I wondered what nationality our conductor was. I hadn’t heard him speak at all since Doug and I had begun pleading for leniency. Doug never stopped trying to get us out of this; he even got down on his knees. It was impressive; I believe he tried words in languages he didn’t speak, to no avail. Just then, the border guard leaned his semi-automatic against a pillar. I was sure he was in the process of getting a pair of handcuffs out, to cuff Doug. Okay, it had just gone from bad to very bad to no way; we were going to be arrested in Bulgaria. My mind started to fly—jail, then what—do they even have a judicial system, or do they just throw people immediately in dark, dingy Communist prisons? My imagination was out of control. Were there places worse than bad prisons where they lock up the spies and throw away the keys?
A second border guard ran up, yelling and motioning for the guards harassing us to come quickly. I couldn’t understand what the problem was, but it appeared to be more serious than the need to detain the two American spies. At that moment, our previously silent conductor jumped in and handed one of the border guards our passports, apparently saying he’d take responsibility for the two spies, making sure they would never touch Bulgarian soil again. He appeared to ask his friend Borislav if he could okay us quickly, as the train had been held up way too long? The guard looked at the conductor, looked at us, looked at his partner, looked at the new, approaching guard and threw up his hands. Swearing up a storm in Bulgarian, he stamped our passports and ran off to solve whatever the new crisis was.
As we boarded the train our conductor admonished us in perfect English: “You fools are very lucky; they were going to transport you up to Sofia (the capital of Bulgaria.) They have a terrible prison there. Who knows when they would have remembered you were even in there!”
Yes, we were lucky, but the unpleasantness wasn’t over yet. Over the sound of my heart racing, I heard furious comments from other passengers and saw the dirty looks aimed at Doug and me. The train was very off schedule now, and the two American idiots were to blame.
Sleep was out of the question. Eventually, I couldn’t take it anymore and quietly moved out into the hallway, where I sat down on the floor next to a dim hallway light. It was the middle of the night, but the huge train was just now quieting down. It had been an hour or so since the Paul & Doug Spy Variety Show.
I fell asleep in the passageway, waking when I was gently kicked by our friend and savior, the conductor. We had another border check as we crossed into Turkey.
At our stop in Edirne, the border town, I woke up Doug. We ran out to find something to eat on yet another train platform. Folded dough sandwiches stuffed with something unidentifiable was the best we could do, but we were hungry, and they disappeared fast.
Standing in the hallway next to the open windows, Doug and I talked about getting off this hell on wheels and onto, we hoped, a much better sister train that could take us east to Afghanistan and India. We would stay overnight in a hotel and leave again the next morning, arriving in India, hopefully, in a few more days.
About an hour away from Istanbul, I stood in the hallway smoking my cigarette, watching camels, unbridled and wandering free, dotting the landscape. The wonder of that made all the trauma with the border guards almost worth it. Yeah, I was entering another world for sure.
My reverie was interrupted by Doug, who came around the corner and asked if he could have a couple of cigarettes for himself and a guy he had just met. Introductions were made. “As-salamu alaykum,” nodded the nicely dressed gentleman as I lit their cigarettes. (I only had two Marlboros left. Would I have to start smoking foreign cigarettes?) Our new smoking buddy, Dr. Sevim, was a doctor, of what I did not know. He was about forty years old and better dressed than anyone else I had seen on the train. Born and raised in Istanbul, he had traveled extensively east and west during and after schooling. He was much more interested in us than he was in talking about himself and was especially interested in Doug’s updates on New York City, where he had studied ten years ago.
After a few minutes, the conversation still on NYC, I started to drift, wondering what the next couple of days would bring. I almost wished we were planning to spend more time in Istanbul, one of the world’s oldest and most mysterious cities.
I raised my hand. “Doctor, pardon me, if I may, you greeted us just before with a phrase I’ve heard numerous times on this train. I believe it was something like ‘salum alaken.’ What does it mean, and should we be using it as we make our way into Muslim lands?”
He responded, “The Muslim greeting ‘As-salamu alaykum’ means ‘Peace be upon you.’ And then the usual response would be ‘Wa-Alaikum-Salaam,’ which means ‘And unto you peace also.’” I seemed to have hit an important chord with this question, and he continued. “Islam is a wonderful way of life; the way of it is so wonderful. The norm of specifying how it should be put forth: ‘As-salamu alaykum’ meaning ‘peace be upon you’ or more perfectly:
