THE MEN AND THE WOMEN

The sky is as dark as a cup of black coffee and the air is warm like a computer that has been used for several hours. A thumping and cheering pattern erodes my thoughts and I wake from the foggy strings holding me in my thoughts. Mr Keppler’s game of soccer paints an active background to the night. Hannah and Aleah return from the bathroom with a story to tell. Amidst the giggles erupting from the two girl’s mouths I am told a story of the turkish toilets that Hannah so gratefully indulged in. The moment comes to an end and my head turns back to the game. Rubber turf digs into my knees and leaves black residue. The ball, dirty and worn, is being touched a thousand times by each of the sweaty men. Time passes and so does the ball. Growing in my body is a feeling, one you would feel if you were in a small elevator and your stomach drops as it groans to a halt. It is uncomfortable and I want it to go away. I feel the need for a bathroom, and depart. Aleah joins me for a visit to our Turkish friend. We enter the restroom facility and look hesitantly at the hole in the ground. I knew what was coming and I still don’t know if I want to relieve myself in a tiny subsection of a room that has a hole in the floor and a blueish curtain instead of a solid, breeze-resistant door. I turn to my partner in crime and show the look of utter unnamable-emotion on my face. “I don’t really have to go to the bathroom anymore.” “Me neither.” A man walks into the bathroom just as we are exiting. ‘Do they seriously only have one bathroom for the guys and the girls to share?’ Aleah and I stand in the main part of the building that the bathrooms are in. The scratched men’s bathroom sign has appeared in both of our visions. A women's bathroom must exist if that is the men’s. Faces, fixed in a clueless position, eyes, searching for a Women’s WC sign that doesn’t seem to appear. But the owner of the facility does. He is a kind Turkish man and he points us in a direction, the one that leads to the polluted, restless night of one of the largest cities in the world. ‘I really need to go to the bathroom and now I am getting kicked out of the facility because I accidentally went into the mens bathroom. Uh.’ The man leads us into another building right next to the one we were in. Shuffling of feet fills the echoing, cluttered open floor plan. Into the corner we go and a Women’s bathroom stands in front of us, toilet, sink, soap and all. Women should always be pampered.