Don’t Come Here

A few months ago, I got an email out of the blue from a producer for a travel radio show hosted by a lauded travel journalist. He would be recording his radio show in Istanbul, and they wanted to have me on the program to talk about living in Turkey as an American. I jumped at it. Why not? It seemed like a cool opportunity as well as a chance for networking. Plus, day-to-day pandemic life was hitting peak tedium, and it was something to look forward to. We’d record in one of the palace hotels on the Bosphorus, and it would only take 20 minutes or so.

My positive antibody test was only a few months old at that point, so I felt pretty comfortable spending that time in a closed space with strangers. So much of this pandemic has involved weighing risks, gaming out probabilities, testing comfort levels. Personally, this was fine for me. 

When I arrived, they were behind schedule. The journalist asked if I was okay hanging out in the room while he broadcast his weekly Facebook Live report. “Have some baklava!” he said. I settled in to watch. He was professional, snapping into “on” mode as soon as the camera was on, laying out the ever-changing Covid restrictions, the state of cruise ship travel, the summer options for Americans. I was surprised to learn that he had only had his first vaccine shot– I would have guessed he was in the eligible age group, and assumed that anyone traveling abroad who could have gotten jabbed would have. 

“If there isn’t another wave, Turkey is open to Americans and it’s a great place to visit!” he proclaimed.

Chewing on my baklava, I winced inwardly. We are in another wave, I thought. 

And then it was time for my interview, and after about an hour and a half total, I said farewell to the journalist and the producer and left the hotel to scurry home before curfew.

I wish that was the end of that story. A fun little professional anecdote, a few new connections, an interesting night eating baklava in a palace.

Except one Friday night, exactly 15 days later, I got a message on Instagram (of all places) from the producer. 

“I wanted to let you know discreetly that I tested positive for covid about a week after returning. [The journalist] was positive at the time of the interview.”

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I wasn’t planning on writing about this at all, even though at the time I was shocked and furious. When I got that message, I was not sick and hadn’t felt sick, but I had seen plenty of people in the 15 days since the interview. The producer told me that the journalist had taken a Covid test to leave Turkey and it had come back positive… two days after our interview.

Two days after our interview was a lockdown weekend. Had I been told, I could have isolated and gotten a test. Instead, I found myself hunched over a notebook on my couch as I tried to map out everyone I had crossed paths with in the last 15 days, desperately trying to determine if I could have passed on the virus.

It seems like I didn’t. I would guess that the antibodies did, in fact, work. But that seemed beside the point. There are plenty of situations I’ve been in that could have gotten sticky– in April, there were 50,000 and then 60,000 cases a day, plenty of chances for one meeting to become contagious. But I think a travel journalist has more of an obligation to promote responsible travel– and it begins with embodying that ethic.

A lot of our interview was about living in Turkey as an American, and a point I tried to make in our conversation felt more relevant after this whole debacle: I am part of a community here. Turkey long ago ceased to be a place I travel in; it became a place I live, and I have a responsibility to all the people around me. It’s a neighborhood. I tried to say that in the interview. Afterwards, it felt like that was actually the point. 

The radio show crew could return to the US and never see the ripples of their travels, never have to deal with the impact the virus could have here. I can’t do that. This is where I live. It matters if my community gets sick. It matters to me.

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In mid-April, everyone over the age of 16 became eligible for the vaccine in the US. Around the same time, things in Turkey began to shut down again as our wave became a spike. While Americans got jabbed, we got 7pm curfews and the return of the full weekend lockdown and closed restaurants, again. 

I had already decided to fly back to the US in May to get my vaccination, and ended up taking off the day before Turkey went into a full three-week lockdown. Suddenly, as my friends tried to navigate an uncertain alcohol ban and the strangling of daily life, I was in California, where the roses were bursting from front lawns and the volunteers at the vaccine site told me to send in anyone from my family who needed a shot. My appointment was the morning after I landed. Less than 24 hours after I left Turkey, I had my first dose of Pfizer.

“The pandemic is basically over!” people kept saying throughout the month.

“My friends are locked in their apartments and they can’t buy alcohol,” I replied, again and again.

Around that time, a small social media scandal broke out in Turkey around a national tourism campaign, encouraging tourists to visit and featuring images of flight attendants and travel industry folks wearing masks that said “Enjoy! I’m Vaccinated.” Rightly, all the people locked in their homes, waiting endlessly for their vaccinations, and unable to enjoy their own country were upset. It seemed as though Turkey was open for everyone except the people who lived here. 

They quickly took down the tourism campaign. 

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In May, I got a message on my Instagram account from a blue-check account of an actress who lives in LA. She was coming to Istanbul in June, she said, and she read my blog and wanted to know if I would be willing to meet up with her.

I usually say yes to this kind of thing, because I love meeting new people– making new connections is sort of the point of putting so much of my life onto the internet. I said yes to her, why not? One thing I missed during those early pandemic days were the random coffee meet-ups that could spool out into a long and lasting friendship, or perhaps would just be an hour wiled away with someone I’d never see again. Just the act of making conversation felt like a lost joy. 

We met at one of my favorite cafes in Kadikoy and chitchatted a bit about her trip to Istanbul. I asked her why she had come to Turkey.

“Y’know, I knew someone who went to Turkey about four years ago and it looked so beautiful and I never got it out of my head,” she said.

Also, she admitted, she just wanted to travel after a year-plus of pandemic, and Turkey was one of the few places open to Americans at the moment. 

“Did you get vaccinated?” I asked her, almost as a reflex.

She squirmed a little. “Not yet.”

I stared.

“I haven’t gotten around to it yet… I think it just opened up in California… I didn’t think I’d have time before my trip!… I’ll do it eventually.”

The rest of our conversation is a bit of a blur because I was so put off. 

What I wanted to say was: We are still in a pandemic here! So many people I know haven’t yet been able to get vaccinated, because there is not the same kind of availability here that there is in the US. Why are you traveling to this country when you haven’t bothered to get vaccinated yet? It’s been available to you for nearly two months in California.

I wanted to say, you are being very irresponsible.

I didn’t say that. I did try to tell her a bit about our lockdowns and the stress and tension so many people felt here, still.

“I figured it was fine because everyone had to get a PCR test to get on the plane!” she said.

“I got Covid on a plane,” I replied.

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When I left this perfectly nice girl at the cafe, I was fuming. I thought about the travel journalist at the palace hotel, and my discomfort with travel and travel writing, and about responsible travel. 

How many more times will I encounter travelers skirting their responsibilities in Covid times? 

The numbers are decent in Turkey right now, though we all doubt that the numbers are real. Last summer, the official numbers were smudged until October, when the ministers finally had to admit that the daily cases had been undercounted since late July. They didn’t announce the real numbers until November, which is when a lockdown went into effect– and that lockdown is ongoing, in June. No one here has been (legally) out on a Sunday, or past 10pm, in seven months.

So it seems safe to assume that the numbers might be low to promote tourism. And I understand that Turkey needs the tourism money– the economy is doing poorly and tourism is a massive boost. But at what cost? Should unvaccinated Americans really be encouraged to come here, when so many people who live here don’t yet have access to vaccines? My gut says no.

And yet, while I internally rage, perhaps I am a hypocrite. I have been encouraging my friends to come visit me as soon as humanly possible. One dear friend from the US is coming to stay with me for two weeks in July; my family will come later in the summer. (They are all vaccinated.) Maybe more will take up my invitation and come to the city on the Strait before year’s end.

This seems like something different, though. The pandemic separated so many of us from the people we love. I think people should take advantage of vaccination and opening borders to see each other. I live far away from a lot of people I love dearly, and I’ve flown to the US twice during this pandemic– only to see my family, but still, it’s a long international flight.

The difference, in my eyes, is community. Maybe we need to think about traveling as joining a community, even if it’s only temporary. Maybe the whole concept of travel needs to shift.  I want people to come here who are invested in the people, in the COMMUNITY of the place, and not just the thrill of travel or the desire to get moving again after a pandemic year of forced stillness. I want the tourists who come here to care as much about the health of this city as I do. And not just that– I want all travelers everywhere to feel like this. If the pandemic should have taught us anything, it’s that our public health is all interconnected. Because Istanbul might be a fleeting place for you, but for me, it’s my home, it’s the people I love, it’s the place that grounds me. We are not finished with the pandemic in Turkey, and visiting for only a few days doesn’t absolve you from the responsibility to think about that.

And I personally want to take that thinking with me as we all move forward into the post-pandemic word. Because I will start traveling internationally eventually too, maybe not until next year, but someday inevitably soon. I want to be conscious of the community of the place I am traveling to. If I am there, I am part of that community too.

For now, I am stuck wondering: How long will it take before I feel comfortable saying, “Yes, come to this beautiful country that I am so lucky to live in,” instead of “Please, please, don’t come here”?