the power of pink

i have a pink cell phone which i like to use because motorola's marketing department doubtless says my demographic's colour is gun-metal grey, not bubblegum pink, which makes me very subversive.



they sentenced me to twenty years of boredom
for trying to change the system from within

but my phone's SIM card has self-destructed. cell phones here have to be registered at the central agency and mine was not so it turned itself off, and i had to go and put my name on the list.

we had to go all the way to the turkcell central office to do this. mo's driver took me. he was buffing the car when i went down.

thirty minutes out on an eight lane expressway.

the turkcell head office has a big steel gate crowned with razor wire, and a metal barricade in front also wrapped with wire. we drew up to the bar and stopped. two guards in black uniforms, sunglasses and crewcuts came out. the driver spoke to one. the other took down our license plate number and wrote it on a clipboard. the driver and one guard talked while the other guard ran a sniffer wand around the undercarriage of the car, listening to its output through headphones. a third swabbed the door handles with a cotton ball which he took into guard's booth while we waited. the car radio played turkish pop.

after an interminable wait the guards waved us through. two of them lifted the barricade out of the way.

we drove into a huge and mostly empty parking lot that cameras panned. we parked close and got out. then up the four steps, down a long cement walkway past two huge statues of men done in bronze, and under long banners that said turkcell.

in through the heavy metal and glass front doors, into the grey concrete structure with almost no windows.

inside it was dim. fluorescent lights buzzed overhead. i followed the driver's lead, placing my wallet, passport case and phone in a plastic tray to go through the x-ray machine. i removed my shoes and sent them through as well, and stepped through the metal detector. on the other side two guards in body armour and submachine guns stood stiffly. one held the leash of a dog that sat at his feet. the x-ray technician was a woman with her hair in a bun. my plastic tray came out the other side. the two guards looked disapprovingly at my pink cell phone, hands on their weapons. it looked more pink than ever.

i reached for my wallet and phone. the guard stopped my hand.

"dur," he said, and i knew what he meant: stop.

then he indicated the viewfinder on my phone and said: "kamera?"

i looked at him.

"ka-me-ra?" he repeated, one syllable at a time.

i nodded.

he said, heavily: "kamera yok." camera, no way.

the driver spoke to him. the one guard talked to the other who held the dog. the dog did not move. the first guard, my little pink phone in his huge fist, picked up a phone, pressed a button on his radio, and said two short sentences. then a moment's wait, a response, and two more curt words. then he said to us:

"ok."

they sent us over to the glassed-in reception desk where the driver explained what we were there for. the woman behind it talked through an intercom with an impassive voice. we signed for visitor badges. a man came and escorted us up, through the electronically locked turnstiles.

they took us into an office with crystal trophies etched with cyrillic lettering, a portrait of mustafa kemal, and an orange hardhat with a headlight on top of a plain grey filling cabinet. a plodding clerk in a turtleneck took my information down, crosschecked my passport and typed everything into a ToughBook like they use in afghanistan. she printed some forms. i signed, initialed, signed again. she explained the terms of service to the driver. finally we were done. she handed me my phone which gleamed metallic pink under the lights.

back down the stairs under escort, cell phone in hand and pink. past the reception desk where we gave back our badges. past the two guards who this time were expressionless. the dog growled and made for me, but the one guard yanked him back remorselessly. the black dog eyed me and did not look away.

the driver led me out and back to the car, stealing two drags from a cigarette on the way. he tossed it mostly untouched onto the brown grass. then back out through the fortress walls. again they lifted away the metal barricade and crossed our license number off their clipboard. then onto the expressway. grey sooty cedar plants in the median.

we were so far out of the city that the driver took me along for two of his deliveries, one to a hospital, one to a non-descript warehouse. from there back into the city centre through the tunnel so hazy you can't see the end of it.

luckily i had the foresight to save my cell phone welcome message to the phone, not the SIM card, so that when i powered it up again after being dropped off at my destination i was reminded: that marianne loves you. it was after one by the time my day got going. all i wanted was to be out in the sun and the cool air. turkcell pretty much sums up my experience in ankara.