Part 9
At about six o’clock in the morning, I opened my eyes in the middle of Istanbul. Somewhat taken aback a few minutes later I came to in a city that had awoken hours ago. I walked about a bit and wished I had a thousand eyes. I addressed a hairmate and asked him where the ‘scene’ was. He pointed out the teahouse opposite the ‘Blue Mosque’ and but for the hubbly-bubblies it looked as if I was back in Amsterdam.
Nearby was a dirt-cheap hippie hotelette and everywhere you could eat for next to nothing. I got by on a dollar a day and bought a ticket to Haifa for a fortnight later. Although I regularly hung out in the teahouse I also made long rambles through the city. I soon got used to motorists’ overtaking manoeuvres on the pavement, could not get enough of Turkish music dropping and heaving with clouds of violins and ate my fill of cloying Oriental pastry. I did the obligatory tour of the Blue Mosque, Topkapi and the Kasbah, enjoyed views over the Bosporus and had to abort a visit to a Turkish bath, because someone insisted on scrubbing my back and I declined.
I even figured in a movie: rich family, runaway daughter, parents searching. They come to a depraved hippie party where we are dancing out of our wits and see the apple of their eye through a glass door. I can still see the sincere dismay on their faces, flat against the glass. An also Dutch girl and I even were chosen for close-ups of the decay as we danced in spontaneous indulgence. The shootings took place on a cruise ship that was moored in the Bosporus and we were shuttled over in fast boats, yee haa! Sadly, I never saw the film, clearly meant for domestic use.
One evening I was in my hotel with my roommate Jonathan. He asked me if I had ever smoked hashish. From the moment I arrived in Copenhagen it had been offered to me, like LSD, heroin, amphetamine, you name it. Thanks, but no thanks.
But he, as a first, told me and eased me, suspicion appeased me and liberated my curiosity.
In the middle of the room a light bulb hung from a cord with a tin can around it for a lampshade. This can had dozens of holes through which the light was spotcast on the walls. In turn we smoked a pipe with a long slender stem and a small copper head as large as a cent.
After two pipes Jonathan asked if I felt anything. Already? I thought and said ‘no’.
‘Well then, watch this,’ and he flicked his finger against the lamp can. Instead of the light spots the walls seemed to move. This was no special effect, this was a separate reality.
Jan Ploeg
print version