ISTANBUL: WHAT A RIOT!

What I like about my job is you never know what is going to happen next. One minute your sat at your friends, having dinner,unemployed, wondering where the next job is coming from, when you get a phone call like this:
"Hi. Is that Carly?" A voice asks. She continues, "Becky gave me your number. She said you were very good. I need some one to come and help me do costume on a promo in Istanbul!"
The conversation continues for a couple of minutes before I hang up and looking a bit shell shocked look at my friend and say "I think I'm going to Istanbul in 3 days!"
Alex my friend looks at me and says
"Isn't that where all those riots are?"
"Oh balls!"

The next day I've arranged to meet my boss at her studio. She's late as she has had a run in with TFL for not swiping her Oyster card and has been fined on the spot for it. She is frazzled by it all, as I'm trying to find out the details of the job, but she is still annoyed about her morning and doesn't really relate to what I'm asking her. When she does calm down she asks if I have my laptop?
"No" I reply feeling really unprofessional. I rush back to my flat. This is not a great start.
Finally we sit down, lap top in hand and talk about the job at hand.
"So we have to do 150 costumes. All different teams representing their country in the Olympics" my boss continues "And we need to take them all out to Istanbul with us."
"OK" I smile. "So how many do you have together so far?"
"None!"
My face drops.
"I have only just had my designs signed off" she says.
"When are we going to Istanbul again?" I ask.
"I go Friday morning. Your flight is at 4.30pm from Heathrow, the same day."
"OK" I say still smiling, "Do we have any sizes for people?"
"Not really! We have a few but they don't really make any sense!"
I look down at the piece of paper with the few measures on it. She is right! They don't make any sense!
"OK" I say still managing to smile and look calm.
"I just need you to get on with it and start sourcing costumes" she says.
"OK!" Still smiling.
"Oh! And we are on a type budget as well! She says finally.
"OK!" I think my smile is actually frozen to my face now as I'm in shock. It's Wednesday morning. I have two and a half days to get 150 costumes together, to fly to Istanbul. I have not really got any sizes and I have a tight budget. I feel like I'm going to be sick. "This is impossible" I think to myself, "I can't do this." I must admit I sit on my laptop for the first half an hour, just kind of looking at the screen in shock, pressing some keys, every now and again, to make it look like I'm doing something. Then I remembered my GCSE's exams where you have that sudden freak out when you look at the paper and realise you haven't revised any of the questions, but then something kicks in and your like "I can do this! I can do it! I can do anything (Ok that last bit isn't quite true)!" Then you are just writing down the answers. My GCSE head comes into play. "I can do this!!!!!"

The next 2 days are a blur of phone calls, internet searching, and shopping, and when I say shopping, I mean shopping. Rolling suitcases round shops, bulk buying shirts, trousers and shoes, to which I get funny looks and comments, like I have some kind of weird fetish. It's on one of these occasions while buying 50 pairs of the same white shoes in Primark and throwing them into a suitcase, the cashier goes:
"You must really like these shoes hey?"
Now I don't whether she is being funny or serious, but I'm stressed and tired and not really in the mood for it.
"What! Do you really think I would be buying myself 50 pairs of white Primark shoes for myself? Really? What kind of person do you think I am?" I retort.
"Should I put the receipt in the suitcase?" Is all she can reply.

It's Friday morning. 3am to be precise! I'm still at my bosses studio working. We are surrounded by the remains of a Chinese take away which was ordered with great difficulty at 12am as nearly every take away was shut. I'm exhausted! My boss on the other hand is still going strong! This girl isn't normal. She just doesn't get tired! I think we could of been there all night if I hadn't told her that she was actually being picked up to go to the airport in 2 hours and still hadn't packed. She left for the airport not having been to sleep.

Later that afternoon it's my turn to leave for the airport. I'm with two of the trainees; Jenifer and Isabella who will be coming with me to Istanbul. Isabella is so calm, if she was anymore laid back she'd be dead! I'm feeling pretty calm myself for once. I just have to pick up some jackets from the tailor on the way to Heathrow and I'm just waiting on a order of missing trousers, but that left ages ago and should be here any moment? I wait! I wait some more! Nothing. I ring the supplier.
"They were delivered ages ago!"
"They weren't! I have been here and nothing had arrived!" I say in a panic tone "I need them now. I'm leaving for the airport!"
"Well I have a note to say they were signed for" he says. He starts to reel off the address and my face turns white.
"No! No! No!" I scream down the phone, "That's the wrong address! That's the production office! I haven't got time to argue about this!" I slam down the phone.
I throw a load of money at Jenifer.
"Right get to soho to the production office and get those clothes and meet me at the airport" I yell at her.
"Isabella! Let's get in a taxi and get to the tailors!"
I think I might of aged about 10 years in the 2 hours that proceeded this. We were always cutting it fine, but with the added London traffic I feel sick. Luckily we make it and to my relief at Heathrow Jenifer is waiting for us with the parcel, looking at bit worn. Then me and Isabella entertain a group of onlooking Indian tourists by her sitting calmly on the already bulging suitcase while I try to shove more clothes into it. I sit in the airport feeling like some one has run me over and I'm not even in Istanbul yet!

The Istanbul riots started first on May 28th as a sit down protest for future plans for Istanbul's Taksim Gezi park. The peaceful protest was met with brutal violence and a forced eviction that caused outrage nationally and internationally. Due to this, protests became wide spread throughout Turkey, but were met with more brutal force by the police and Army which caused huge conflict. This was most widely seen in Taksim in Istanbul, which became the heart of the protests and conflict.
"Where is are hotel?"
"Taksim!"
"Shit!"
Me and Isabella are being driven to are hotel, by one if the production drivers who speaks bad English but has managed to tell us that our hotel is right in the middle of the riots! I have no idea what we are driving into: A war zone? In fact it was actually completely the opposite. It's calm, dead in fact! "There is nothing to worry about here" I thought, as I closed my eyes that night "The press blow everything out of proportion!

I knew the next day when I woke up it was going to be one of those days. We had an impossible task of dressing extras that had never been fitted or that we even had sizes for, but I put my fighting head on and got on with it. This involved stealing on iron board and iron from the hotel; trying to work a Victorian sewing machine; spray painting hats on football stadium pitch; screaming a lot at the Turkish production; and cutting up, sewing and stuffing shoes with tissue to make them fit! As I stood there in the middle of a football stadium in Istanbul watching them finally perform in the 150 costumes that 3 days ago did not exist, I felt a great sense of achievement! "We did it! We bloody well did!" I thought. With this sudden sense of relief I started to be aware of things again. Outside the stadium, there was noise, like nothing I had heard before. The sound of thousands of people and cars, shouting and beeping. As the hours passed the noise became louder. Soon the news spread that there where riots all over the city and by the early hours of the morning when it came time for us to leave, we were told that it might be impossible for us to get back to Taksim as the government had gone in that night to liquidate the square and had shut off the area. There was talk of us sleeping in the stadium but it was decided we should try. What followed was one of the craziest journeys of my life. It was like something out of a film! Our mini bus driver sped high speed through the streets, passing protesters and riot police who fired gas at them and tried to hit them with batons. I saw one guy get hit in the chest with a tear gas canister which knocked him off his perch and he fell down next to our vehicle. Our driver spun round fast sending most of us flying and the bottle of water I had been drinking fell all over my lap, so I looked like I had wet myself. After running the mind field for what felt like hours, we finally made it back to Taksim. It was a mass of riot police, and the remains of a battle. Every now and again a bang would go off in one direction and a mass of police would move. We parked in front of our hotel. As the "Good" costume girl I am, I started taking out all our costumes from the bus, but then a man from our hotel started to try and usher me inside.
"Miss! Get inside now! It is dangerous here!"
"But I have to get the costumes out!" I shouted in response.
The next thing I know there is a mist and something catches the back of my throat and I start to cough so much it's like I can't breath. Then my eyes start to stream with tears, so much I can't see. Someone drags me to the hotel as I can't really see. As I enter some one starts to throw water in my eyes and gives me water to drink to clear my throat. It takes a couple of minutes to recover and go "what the Hell happened there?"
"Shit! I've just been tear gassed!" I think to myself. We are beyond tired as we drag our costumes to the lift. The lift doors open and there seems to be a load of quite drunk men in it, all dressed in white. They cheer as we enter. Me and my boss are less impressed! The lift stops at the next floor and more drunk men dressed in white get in,but this time one is wearing a bra. I realise they are Swedish and it seems like some sort of stag do. The lift stops at each floor and more drunk men get in and out, or stand blocking the doors talking. My boss keeps asking them to get out of the doors so that the lift can move, but no one is really listening, so she just starts pushing them. The lift starts moving again and the swedes start to break into song, singing 'I had the time of my life."
The lift stops again and they are still singing while more swedes in white try to get in the lift. This is all too much for my boss!
"Get out! Get out!" She screams "I want to go to my floor!"
It's at this point I have a funny moment. It's 5.30am. I haven't slept in over 24 hours. In fact I've hardly had any sleep for he last 5 days. I have worked to myself to the bone. I've just been tear gassed and now I'm stuck in a lift with a Swedish stag party singing "I've had the time of my life" from Dirty dancing! For a moment I think that the tear gas must of killed me, for surely this is Hell! It's then, I just break down in hysterical laughter, still while my boss is screaming at the Swedes. I just couldn't stop. I guess it could of been worse. They could of been singing Abba. As I went to bed, I looked out the window to see riot police chasing and firing at people in the street. I had never seen anything like it in my life. It was a war zone. I closed the curtain. I was too tired to see anymore. It had been one of the craziest days of my life.

The next days that followed, I saw more violence. I got tear gassed again. I was stopped from going to taskim square. I saw people water cannoned, and beaten. Tanks roamed the streets and it was impossible to go outside with out a gas mask on, and then all of a sudden it stopped. The city which had been a war zone returned to normal, like nothing had happened. I could walk the streets freely and see the city and it's sights in all its glory and believe me Istanbul is a glorious city, one of the most beautiful I have seen. On my last day in the city, I took a bus to Taksim Square. The police and army were there, busy cleaning up the aftermath. Washing away the evidence, that anything had ever happened at all, but it did happen. 11 people died. 8,163 were injured. 4,900 people were arrested, all because they wanted the right to have freedom of speech. I suddenly realised how lucky I was and that my freedom was something I would never take for granted again. Istanbul and this job was something I would not forget, not in a long time. In fact never!