Postcard from the EDGE

For nearly a decade, Istanbul had been a magical place for journalist SUZY HANSEN— a cosmopolitan refuge and a welcoming home. Then the violence began.

- Suzy Hansen

On the day last March when a man blew himself up in the middle of Istanbul, I was at home. I heard the blast as I sat at my desk; it was nearby on Istiklal Avenue, where I walk every day. On the night in June when ISIS attacked the Istanbul airport, I was having dinner at the new Soho House, in a nineteenth-century Italianate mansion that was once the American consulate. My first thought was that it would make for a brilliant second target, and I quickly scanned the perimeter of the terrace for an escape. In the early hours of the military coup in July, I joined a line of Turks snaking out of my local deli and stuffed water bottles and beer cans in my pockets, preparing for the long night ahead. (“Are you sure you don’t need three packs of cigarettes?” the deli worker asked a customer as I left.) I watched live footage at home of the army firing on Turkish civilians—and when fighter jets flew low over the city, I took cover in my bathroom.

I am not a war correspondent. I never dreamed of watching history unfold on the front lines, or bearing witness to atrocity, or learning the difference between the sounds of a mortar and a car bomb. I chose to live in Istanbul because when I arrived the city felt like a refuge and then, very quickly, like home. Over the last decade I have become so attached that I am still momentarily confused when people ask me if I plan to leave. Istanbul has been the place I have felt safest in my life.