Acı Soslu Demokrasi

I was still at least a kilometer from Taksim Square when my nostrils began to tingle, then my eyes. Is there a protest up ahead? I almost asked a couple coming from there but decided that was a stupid obvious question. A few people I passed in the drizzle of rain were squeezing at their noses and a couple headscarved women had covered their mouths and noses, but other than the street kids who coughed deeply and rubbed at their eyes as they held out tissue packets toward me once I got to the square nobody seemed to acknowledge or mind. The cafes along Cumhuriyet Caddesi had packing outside and empty inside seating and the Syrian refugee families who now line the north side of Gezi Park--home to a string of restaurants and bus companies before redevelopment but now just concrete--sat as usual on the sidewalk with their children scampering about them. There was no protest in Taksim, no police presence even. And the gas didn't seem to get any stronger as I got closer to the square, as if they had bombed the city with so much that it had gone up into the atmosphere and was now drizzling down evenly and lightly across the whole area. As I passed the square toward Cihangir a stooped man in a gold hassled green Ottoman getup stepped out from one of the Turkish Delight shops and asked me Where are they squeezing? or Where are they fucking? Tarlabaşı? (sıkıyor or sikiyor I didn't hear--same meaning in this case) I said I didn't know. Maybe the protest was in Tarlabaşı and the wind blew the tear gas through Taksim down Cumhuriyet--I should check the news.