I saw a guy in a wheelchair on Taksim Square. First thing I thought: that must be a journalist spending a day or two on wheels to discover what it’s like to be bound to a wheelchair in Istanbul. I mean, it must be impossible to actually live your life in Istanbul sitting in a wheelchair. The cobbled streets, the stairs and steep streets everywhere, the cars that are either going very fast without touching their brakes or stand still so close to each other that even on foot it’s sometimes hard to pass between two cars. How do you get on or off a boat? And what if you have to pee, how do you reach the toilets that always seem to be on the highest floor or in the basement? The guy I saw was crossing Taksim Square; his friends had to help him quickly get from the roadway to the very high pavement because cars were coming at full speed. My thinking he was a journalist was of course a stupid assumption because I’m one myself. But whether he’s on wheels forever or for two days, he must definitely have an interesting story to tell.

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