The world was on fire and no one could save me but you
It’s strange what desire will make foolish people do
I never dreamed that I’d meet somebody like you
And I never dreamed that I’d lose somebody like you
Chris Isaak — “Wicked Game” (from the album Heart Shaped World)
I don’t remember if I heard the song “Wicked Game” before I saw David Lynch’s Wild at Heart, but for a while, I connected the song to driving on a dark highway where anything was possible and anything could happen — most of it bad. A waking nightmare, but beautiful and hypnotic.
This was before I met Carina.
As if the Lynchian overtones weren’t enough, the song created its own paradox. Was it a love song disguised as a cautionary tale or some sort of warning? Perhaps a lover’s lament about a love untold or unrequited desire? I began to think the singer was haunted and trapped in some sort of cruel purgatory of permanent heartache and longing. Almost Sisyphean in nature.
Until I met Carina.
It was the year I quit my job to go backpacking overseas, and the song followed me all over Europe. A clothing store in Copenhagen. A boombox in Krakow. I heard it through the open door of a bar in the Algarve town of Lagos and a Mykonos nightclub as a warm-up to “Ride on Time” by Black Box. I even played it at the request of some Austrian tourists when I worked as a DJ on the Greek island of Santorini. My requests ranged from Sisters of Mercy to Gloria Gaynor.
But once I met Carina in a place called Pamukkale, the song took on a whole new meaning.
“Wicked Game” is now the soundtrack to my memories in Turkey with Carina. Hitchhiking together along the roadside or lying intertwined in the backseat of an overnight bus ride across central Turkey. The mesmerising guitar riff and haunting vocals will forever transport me back to the Turkish countryside, gazing out the window at the otherworldly Cappadocian landscape of “fairy chimney” rock formations. It’s where I met and fell in love with my future wife from New Zealand.
As it turns out, the song wasn’t following me across Europe. It was guiding me. And I can prove it.
*****
No, I don’t wanna fall in love (this world is only gonna break your heart)
No, I don’t wanna fall in love (this world is only gonna break your heart)
With you
With you
(This world is only gonna break your heart)
It’s important to grasp the absurdity of my chance encounter with Carina. She was born in Hong Kong, grew up in New Zealand. I grew up in a small town outside Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Two people on opposite sides of the globe in different hemispheres. Our paths were somehow destined to cross in a country I never planned to visit, in a town I never heard of until a few months earlier.
Before I left the States, I was working at a mind-numbing aerospace job, going through a midlife crisis in my late twenties. One day, I announced during a staff meeting that I planned to quit my job and sell everything I owned to go wander the globe. Understandably, everyone burst out laughing. The next day, I pinned a map of Europe on the wall above my desk and started to choreograph my travel route. People would come around and say shit like, “You’re not really serious, are you?”
My departure was only a few months away when a photo in the LA Times caught my eye. It was an article about Turkey and the “cotton castles” of Pamukkale. After I tossed the newspaper, I couldn’t stop thinking about the photo, so I fished the paper out of the rubbish bin, and then found Pamukkale on the map. The wheels were turning. Strange forces are now at work.
I traced a potential route up the Turkish coast to Istanbul because that’s how I operated. My OCD tendencies insisted on structure and a plan. I added the ruins of Ephesus to my hit list, and being a big fan of Australian film director Peter Weir and the film Gallipoli, it was settled. After the Greek islands, I planned to take a short detour into Turkey, starting with the limestone thermal pools of Pamukkale. Little did I realise, the future of my universe was now forever changed.
I ended up departing on the day the U.S. started bombing Baghdad at the beginning of the first Gulf War. And so began my “year of living dangerously” as a stateside friend had christened it.
The happenstance nature of my Pamukkale discovery was the first in a series of random events that seemed driven by mysterious, unseen forces. During my travels, from the far corners of Scandinavia down to the Mediterranean, I found myself making snap decisions on a whim and every time I threw caution to the wind, it somehow brought me closer to Carina. A spur-of-the-moment extra day in Prague. An abrupt departure from Venice to catch the last ferry out of Bari into Dubrovnik amid the early days of war-torn Yugoslavia. Even on my last day in Paris, when I met Angelique, who asked me to stay and hang out, but I had to catch an overnight train to San Sebastian.
After spending the summer in Santorini and working as a DJ for ten dollars a day, I finally reached Turkey. I was staying in the seaside town of Marmaris and was supposed to meet up with a group of Turks I had met the previous day at the beach. When they didn’t show up, and I saw people boarding a Pamukkale-bound bus, I felt a sudden compulsion, so I decided to check out a day early. Yet one more random act of spontaneity that would have been unthinkable and so out of character in my former life, but I was now guided by impulsive and curious flights of fancy.
When the universe or a song conspires to bring two people together, it also requires one final pivotal catalyst, which turned out to be Carina’s British-Jamaican friend Donna, travelling to Pamukkale on the same bus to meet up with Carina. I was acquainted with Donna from a brief conversation at the hostel, so upon arrival, we decided to split the cost of a room in a family-run pensione, which was a common practice amongst our fellow backpackers and global nomads. After we checked in, she asked me to tag along to meet her friends.
Guided by “Wicked Game” and a succession of uncanny coincidences and perhaps a few reckless choices and inclinations along the way, I was finally delivered to this precise spot on the planet at this precise moment in time. Just like it was meant to be. On Carina’s birthday, no less.
So there I stood. Face to face with Carina. It felt like she had been standing there forever, just waiting. I sometimes think she should have just looked at me and said, “What took you so long?”
*****
What a wicked game you play, to make me feel this way
What a wicked thing to do, to let me dream of you
What a wicked thing to say, you never felt this way
What a wicked thing to do, to make me dream of you
Carina wore colourful Batik pants and a blue tank top. Petite stature and short-cropped hair with wire-rim glasses and dangling fish earrings, she was sporting an ever so slightly androgynous look. As I stood in front of her, trying to absorb the image of this Asian bohemian with a New Zealand accent, I locked my gaze on her white high-top trainers that looked like a cross between old-school Keds or Converse. My gaze went head-to-toe and then back again. Donna completed introductions, and all I could blurt out was, “Nice shoes.”
It was day one of a ten-day courtship that took a few unexpected twists and turns. Remember that route I outlined up the Turkish coast in painstaking fashion? Yeah, well, that never happened. Instead, this unlikeliest of encounters with my kindred spirit turned into a journey of the heart, set against the backdrop of an exotic land that defied my own expectations and wildest imagination.
Befitting the “Wicked Game” song that guided me, our whirlwind affair and burgeoning relationship had quite the cinematic vibe. I felt like I had stepped into a David Lean or Bernardo Bertolucci film or a Joseph Conrad novel, playing the part of an expat literary character or foreigner lost in a strange land. We were so in-the-moment, I don’t think it mattered to us we’d eventually have to go our separate ways as all star-crossed lovers must do, but that ambivalence would soon change. We certainly had no idea this little odyssey would turn into a lifetime.
During those two days in Pamukkale, I remember browsing in a tourist shop when Carina opened a coffee table book with photos of the central Turkish region of Cappadocia. This was definitely off the beaten path in ways that might have even exceeded my own spirit of adventure. She pointed at a photo that showed homes and dwellings carved out of smooth rock like something out of The Flintstones. It was somewhere in a remote region of Turkey near the town of Göreme.
“What do you think?” Carina asked.
“Looks weird. Trippy.”
“I’m going there next.”
“Thought you were going to Prague.”
“I changed my mind.”
“Just now? Just like that?”
This was so Carina. She was the first fellow backpacker I met over the course of several months who didn’t travel with a guidebook. She was this unassuming woman from New Zealand, travelling all on her own, making it up from day to day. Sometimes hour to hour.
I was content to hug the coast up to Ephesus, but something else was happening, and we both felt it. I was supposed to depart Pamukkale the next day, which cast this weird pall over our last night together. I kept thinking of the Springsteen song “Fourth of July, Asbury Park (Sandy)”: “Love me tonight, ’cause I may never see you again.”
We both got out of bed early to watch the sunrise over the white cliffs, but it soon came time for me to catch my bus to Ephesus. Carina walked with me to say goodbye. I felt sick to my stomach. Heart sick. We were halfway to the bus station when Carina stopped us in our tracks.
“Listen. You wanna go? With me?”
“Go with you?”
“Come with me to Göreme. Travel together.”
“Together? You and me? You’re asking?”
“Yes, I’m asking.”
I had already bought my bus ticket, and despite our undeniable mutual attraction, a twelve-hour overnight bus ride deep into the heart of Turkey was not part of my plan. Besides, I was actually looking forward to seeing Ephesus, but that suddenly didn’t seem so important anymore. We both just stood there, but I already knew my answer within the first few seconds. My brain was saying “no fucking way,” but my heart had other ideas. I wanted to see how this thing turned out.
Over the course of my life, I don’t recall too many times when I could literally feel the weight of a moment. Those few seconds in Pamukkale felt like the Earth had stopped turning and time stood still. A palpable sense of anticipation. It was like standing at a fork in the road with two different futures in front of me. And I could feel it. But my mind was already made up.
I looked at Carina and grinned. I held up my ticket and tore it in half. Something I didn’t do in Paris with Angelique. And then the Earth resumed turning, and everyone returned to their regularly scheduled programming.
For me and Carina, our future paths were not only forever altered, but now permanently intertwined. Perhaps Chris Isaak should have been standing off to the side like a Greek chorus, playing his guitar and singing “Wicked Game.”
As I wrote in my travel journal at the time, “The goodbye scene would have to wait.”
*****
And I don’t wanna fall in love (this world is only gonna break your heart)
No, I don’t wanna fall in love (this world is only gonna break your heart)
With you
The overnight bus ride into Cappadocia on the way to Göreme might be my most indelible memory from Turkey. We had the back of the bus all to ourselves, so we slept in each other’s arms, heading to this faraway land and unknown destination. We lay together in the dark, staring up through the bus window at the starlit sky and silhouettes of the distant hills on the horizon.
In the twilight hours just before sunrise, I sat up and put on my Walkman, and then rubbed the sleep out of my eyes. Early morning light. Magic hour. I gazed out the window at a surreal and dreamlike sight. A dramatic fairytale landscape dotted with strange rock towers, cones, and caves. Homes and houses carved out of rock. It was like a Dr Suess book on LSD. I was staring out at an alien world, as if the bus had left Earth’s orbit sometime during the night.
This soothing fever dream vision would be my quintessential “Wicked Game” moment. There’s something about musical soundscapes that create images of wide-open spaces, like the Ry Cooder guitar riff in Paris, Texas, but “Wicked Game” will always take me back to that nighttime bus ride across Turkey and our early morning arrival in Göreme at first light.
Sometimes I feel like I never left Göreme. I can still see the two of us meandering through town with arms interlocked, drawing curious stares. Horse-drawn carriages. Dirt streets. Livestock with every household. An outdoor speaker calls for prayers at all hours. Making love in the pre-dawn hours while a call to prayer blares in a foreign tongue over a public loudspeaker creates its own sense of strange erotic mysticism, though I doubt that’s what Allah had in mind.
I often say I met Carina in Pamukkale, but fell in love with her during our five blissful days in Göreme. Exploring open-air museums and underground cities with rock-cut chapels and ancient frescoes. Climbing up and down rock faces and cliffs. Nighttime strolls with breathtaking sunsets and star-filled skies across panoramic views. We were fast becoming regulars and a common sight around town. Local residents and shopkeepers would invite us to hang out and drink Turkish tea.
“Wicked Game” no longer conjures up Lynch’s dark, lonely highway, but instead takes me back to this special place and extraordinary time with Carina.
“Wicked Game” is a sonic paintbrush that places me and Carina, right on the canvas in Turkey. We’re both frozen in time, lost together on cloud nine, forever wandering arm in arm through the dusty streets of Göreme. Both of us are strangers in a strange land.
*****
No, I (this world is only gonna break your heart)
(This world is only gonna break your heart)
Nobody loves no one
If I met Carina in Pamukkale and fell in love with her in Göreme, then Istanbul was the long goodbye. Istanbul was an assault on the senses in all the best ways, but we were both so mentally and emotionally preoccupied with my looming departure that we barely noticed. I had to meet my parents in Rome, so amidst the bedlam and chaos of Istanbul, we were just two quiet lovers sharing private moments, wondering if this was the end. It felt like a sad countdown.
Our last night together was tender and bittersweet, and when I left the next day to catch a 24-hour bus ride to Athens, once again, Carina walked with me to the local city bus. We both didn’t know if we’d ever see each other again, so this time, there would be no ticket torn in half.
It was a hurried goodbye with one final cinematic moment. The bus pulled up, and the doors flung open. When I stepped aboard, I turned to say something to Carina, but the doors slammed shut in my face. I gave a panic-stricken, almost heartbroken glance at Carina on the pavement. It suddenly felt like the Yuri-Lara goodbye scene at the “ice palace” country house in Dr Zhivago.
The bus pulled away, and I rushed to the back window, lugging my backpack. The window was caked with dirt and dust, but I was frantic, rubbing my hand across the glass, desperate to see Carina one last time. I could still see her, standing alone on the crowded pavement. A solitary figure like the eye of a hurricane. I savoured this final moment, fighting back tears as she kept getting smaller and smaller, until the crowd seemed to swallow her up. When the bus turned the corner, she was gone.
By the time I got to Rome and met my parents several days later, we checked into a pensione, and they were dying to hear all about my adventures and wondrous things I had done and seen the past several months. I gave them a thoughtful look and spoke the only four words I could think of.
“I met a girl.”
*****
Epilogue
Six months after I left Istanbul, Carina and I made our long-overdue rendezvous in Hong Kong and got jobs teaching English. We would continue our vagabond phase for a few more years, backpacking through Southeast Asia and living in New Zealand and Australia.
We climbed volcanoes in Indonesia, danced the night away at the Full Moon Rave Party in Ko Pha Ngan, made famous by The Beach, played Wiffleball on the Great Wall, bungee jumped in New Zealand, and gazed at the shimmering peaks of the Himalayas and Mt. Everest from the bustling streets of Kathmandu and the precarious, winding mountain roads of Nepal.
Carina and I got married at a Justice of the Peace in San Diego, CA, two years after meeting in Turkey. We bought ten-dollar rings and borrowed strangers out of the hallway to serve as witnesses. We’ve been married for over thirty years and live in Seattle, WA, where we raised two boys, one of whom once wrote a poem called “Pamukkale Baby” as part of his Creative Writing degree at Chapman University.
Carina and I sometimes talk about returning to Turkey, but I might prefer to keep those memories preserved just the way they are. I have no idea what it might be like to return to Pamukkale or Göreme decades after I said “nice shoes” to Carina, but I’m sure it would feel like some weird variation on You Can’t Go Home Again.
Besides, we have the song “Wicked Game” to take us there instead.
