I’m not good with dates, but I think it was a very hot summer in London, way too hot.
I was very nervous, and didn’t know what to expect. I took a plane from Ataturk airport in Istanbul. My mom was crying, while telling me what to do, more importantly, what not to do. My dad was very quiet as usual, I guess he didn’t need to say much, because my mom was doing a good job for both of them. Anyway, I kissed their hands and said goodbye, gave a big hug to my cousin, and joined the queue. I tried not to look behind me, but I knew they were looking at me until I disappeared from their view. I don’t remember clearly how I got on the plane, the ony thing I remember is that I was hoping that no one would talk to me, or ask me about anything, or even notice me, if possible.
I got off the plane, and everything was ok so far, but I was scared of the Home Office questions, in fact, not being able to understand the officials, and answering their questions wrongly.
The officer was fairly polite to me, but we had some communication problems. I don’t remember what he was asking me about, but I kept giving him the same answers, “I am chemical engineer from Istanbul, and I work in denim firm.” He asked some other questions, and I gave the same answers over and over. I guess he was fed up with the same answers. In the end he called a guy to help me out. The guy was a sweet old man, he said he lived in Turkey for a little while, and his Turkish speaking is not very good, but he can understand better. He asked me “w-h-a-t a-r-e y-o-u g-o-i-n-g t-o d-o in London, how long are you gonna stay here for, and what were you doing in Turkey?” I guess I said my answers in the right way, so I passed the border not with too much difficulty, but certainly with some.
Now, I had to go to Seven sisters from Heathrow, and had no clue how to get there.
The Underground was very scary and complicated to me. There were so many lines, and none of them made any sense to me, because, where I come from (Istanbul) we have only one line. So it’s very simple, you either go to Taksim or to 4 Levent, so there is no chance of getting lost. I had two big pieces of luggage, one backpack, a hand bag, and my huge old laptop. I got on the Piccadilly line (now I know it was Piccadilly), and kept showing people the peice of paper that said where I wanted to get to. They were telling me where I should change the line, but most of the time I didn’t understand them, and ended up looking at them in the eyes, and shaking my head to say that “ME NO UNDERSTAND, ME SPEAK NO ENGLISH.” One time there was a sweet girl who drew me a picture, which showed where I should get off the train.
Finally I was at the Seven Sisters tube station, but didn’t know how to get all my stuff up the stairs at once, but there was always someone giving me a hand.
Finally, I was out, and very tired. It was after 10 pm and was still bright outside.