the curious incident of the poodle in the morning

anecdotes of an unexpected encounter

A rather unpleasant drizzle crept up on me this morning as I shifted my body weight to pull open the large garden gate that isolates my driveway in Sariyer from the rest of the world. On days that I am running late, which is most days, this four-step ritual (open gate, get in car, back car up, get out and close gate) is inconvenient enough to leave me momentarily flustered, but not so inconvenient that I would actually invest in an automated system with a clicker. On the admittedly long list of things I want to figure out in life, cutting out the middle-man for gate-opening does not rank particularly high. “We used to have a clicker,” I muttered to myself. The memory of a working clicker does little for me in this moment, but the knowledge of engineering feats past gives me faint assurances for the future of driveway access.

During phase-one of my process (opening the gate), I noticed a middle-aged woman trudging slowly up the street outside our driveway. Built on a steep slope with a sidewalk so narrow one could mistake it as purely decorative, the street outside our house is not a welcoming walkway for pedestrians during the warm summer months, and even less so on a bleak January morning. Headphones in ears, walking shoes on feet, and what appeared to be a blanket clutched to her chest, the woman was putting in a noble shift despite the conditions. I took another cursory glance at her, and then continued onto phases two and three. The drizzle picked up pace.

I completed phase four (closing the gate), and got back into my car, a Volvo that I inherited from my mom a couple years ago. The car is an elegant midnight blue, bar a small battle-scar above one of the back wheels that my dad painted over in what can only be described as a shade of “not quite it, but thanks for trying” azure.

An unfinished podcast from the other day unhelpfully unthawed itself and sprang into life as I re-started the engine, startling me as I waited for oncoming traffic to ease before backing up onto the road. The woman I had seen walking up the hill stopped a few feet ahead of me. We came eye to eye and she took a couple timid steps towards me, and then gestured something pertaining to the car. Assuming she was going to be the third stranger in 24 hours to tell me my front wheel was a little flat, I mimed a gracious “thank you, I know, I’m going to take care of this at some point today” through the window, or as close to that sentiment as I could manage with a thumbs-up and a nod. Appearing dissatisfied with my response, she edged a little closer to the window, which I was all too happy to roll down if it meant I could stop trying to form full sentences with my hand.

“I was wondering whether you could drop me off a little ways up the hill,” she asked, pointing with one hand in the general direction of her desired destination, the other still clutching the blanket.

“Oh!”, I said, a little surprised to hear she wasn’t trying to flag something about my car that needed attention — a commonality in Istanbul.

I continued, “I’d be happy to, but this is actually a one-way street, so I can’t go up straight, I’d have to go down the hill first and turn around, and I’m actually a little late for wo…” my voice trailed off as I realized how insignificant this small impracticality was in the grand scheme of things. I was already late for work. Not helping a stranger was not going to make me un-late.

“Hop in,” I said, gesturing to the passenger’s seat.

The woman thanked me profusely as she got in the car. She told me that she had left the house unaware of how cold it was, and the hill had tired her out. I told her how much I personally disliked this ascent on foot, and that it was more than fair that she had asked for a lift.

“Plus,” she continued, “I started getting worried that we were going to get all sopping wet”.

“We?” I asked, a little puzzled, though my confusion wasn’t to last long.

“Did you not see my little boy?”, she responded, lifting the blanket still clutched to her chest to reveal - even by my “cat person” standards - an extremely darling little dog, fur dampened by his owner’s valiant efforts à pied.

“Oh, how adorable,” I said, immediately identifying it as a poodle; one of the few dogs I can confidently identify. “What kind of dog is it?,” I asked nonetheless, the conversationalist in me edging me on.

“A poodle, ” she said proudly.

“Ah, how wonderful.”

After a brief silence, she told me how much she liked the Volvo, offering that her brother-in-law had gotten one just last year. She said, somewhat poignantly, that she too dreamed of owning one someday. “Inshallah”, I said, adding, “it’s… a very safe car”, not really knowing what else to say about the vehicle. Dogs and cars are two lacunae in my general knowledge.

As we inched closer to the pet shop, it dawned on me that we had been in the car for quite a while. Not much by automotive standards - maybe five minutes - but a significant walk for a woman clutching a dog to her chest. I decided that if my “good deed” was to be truly good, I would also offer to wait outside the pet shop until she was done shopping, and drop her back off at home. My offer was met with a chorus of “Allah razı olsun”s (“God bless you”).

I waited a handful of minutes for my new companion to finish shopping. The podcast was playing again, droning on about a subject I must have found compelling yesterday but today couldn’t care less about. I turned it off.

The lady reappeared, still clutching the poodle, trailed by an employee carrying two big bags of dried dog food. He placed them at the foot of the passenger seat, and they bid farewell to one another.

“Koray is a dear,” she said, as we started off on our way towards her house. “He worked for me for six years; a wonderful person, very reliable.” My curiosity piqued, it was now imperative that I hear more. What did Koray do for six years? What line of work were you in? Please fill me in on the details of your life, dog-clutching stranger in my car, whose errand I am helping run while late to work.

Meltem, as I should rightly call her now that I know her name, began to tell me about her career. She said she had owned and operated a store for MNG Kargo; basically a franchisee of a reputable Turkish cargo company, for sixteen years.

“Business was booming, I was making a lot of money, I had a big house and a big car", she explained. I could tell she wasn’t boasting or putting on a front, she was being honest, nostalgic.

“But then,” she continued, and her tone changed. I knew that something tragic - or at least a little painful to hear - was coming. “Everything changed when my parents died. I sunk really, really low into the pits of depression, and I couldn’t bring myself out of it. I got diagnosed as bipolar, and I basically lost everything; my job, my house, my career…and I had to move back to Sariyer, to my childhood home.”

In the span of about fifteen minutes, a complete stranger on the street had become Meltem, my not-so-distant neighbor, who owns a poodle, buys pet food from a shop up the hill, used to operate a cargo business, wants to own a Volvo someday, and is also bipolar. Life is weird, and wonderful.

“Oh, Meltem, I’m sorry… I don’t really know what to say,” I started to mumble, thinking about whether to bring up my own struggles with mental health in the past, which were obviously not comparable, but maybe would show that the topic wasn’t something that made me uncomfortable, or one that I stigmatized. I decided to posit, “I know first-hand how important mental health can be…”, and before I could finish the thought, she interjected with something that made me very happy to hear.

“You know, actually, I’ve written a book. The book is about my disorder, how I managed to mitigate the affects of it; my experiences, my do’s and don’t’s, what worked for me and what didn’t. I want to help other people get better the same way that I did,” she said.

“Meltem,” I said, at this point completely on-board with the surreality of this entire encounter, “You wrote a book? What’s it called?”

She gave me the title, adding “…by me”, giving me her full name, somewhat sheepishly.

I guessed that our time together in the car was drawing to a close, as Meltem began re-bundling the poodle, whose name I never wound up catching, in the blanket and undoing her seatbelt.

“I can get off here, if that works for you,” said Meltem, pointing to a building that we were coming up on, near the main cemetery. I know the area well. My grandmother, my father’s mother, is buried in that cemetery; something I think about most times I drive or walk past it. It occurred to me that Meltem - a third-generation Sariyer-local, in her own words - probably has relatives buried there too.

As she opened the car door, swooping to pick up the two bags of dog food while still balancing the poodle, Meltem turned to thank me again. This time, her words were less cliche, more heartfelt.

“I really believe in karma,” she said. “I can’t thank you enough for what you’ve done for me today. You’ve made my morning.”

I assured her that it was really no bother. In fact, she had made me quite happy, too.

“No, really,” she persisted. “Just watch: you’re going to have a great day today, because of what you’ve done.” I gave her a little wave as she walked off, then continued on my way.

As I drove, I thought about how many vignettes like this are waiting to present themselves to me, assuming I’m awake enough not to miss them. I thought about how much I had just learned about the life of another human being by offering them a lift in my car for - at most - fifteen minutes. I thought about the lack of an automatic clicker on my door, and how much of a non-issue it was. I thought about how thankful I was to be driving my Volvo, a banged-up, bruised-up, 2012 model car. I thought about how the things you take for granted in life are - so often - the things other people dream about.

I skidded into work, comically late. Hoping to dodge my dad’s glare (he had already texted me in the morning, expressing his dissatisfaction with my tardiness), I walked over to my desk, pulled out my laptop, and ordered Meltem’s book from the website she recommended. It’s set to arrive in a couple days.

I started this blog because I knew I had something to say, though I was confused about what that “something” was. I announced to my friends and family - with admittedly a little too much fanfare, that I would be “writing regularly” from now on. I wrote my first piece, got some nice feedback, and then ceased to even attempt writing again for months. Until today. Meltem, if you’re reading this (which, frankly, I hope you’re not, because that would be a little bit creepy, given I didn’t even tell you my name) I can definitely say that your wish came true: something really great did happen to me today. I sat down and wrote.