Illustration by Larry Humber for The Globe and MailThe Globe and Mail
We had slept in a bit on Sunday. My wife and I had just finished conducting a tour of Turkey in October and had a couple of days to ourselves before heading home. We planned to walk up the street to Taksim Square in the heart of European Istanbul, then head over to the Grand Bazaar and Spice Market.
Bev suggested we move it before the day disappeared, but I managed to stall a bit, deleting spam and cleaning up e-mails before we set off.
We were about the length of a football field away from a 24-year-old man when he detonated himself into oblivion in the middle of the square.
There was no mistaking the explosion for anything other than a bomb. Even if you had never heard one before, you would know this was not a car backfire or a collision. It was a terrible, terrible sound.
My brilliant comment of "That doesn't sound good" was immediately followed by five or six pistol shots in rapid succession. Everyone on the street stopped, almost in a freeze frame.
A short distance ahead of us people were suddenly running, either toward the site of the blast or away from the carnage.
The rest of us stood and watched.
It seemed a short time before police cars and ambulances were screaming up the congested street to the square. A taxi driver in front of us leapt from his cab and immediately started directing traffic away from the scene, clearing a lane for the emergency vehicles. He did all this with one hand, the other firmly clutching his coffee container.
One couple seemed to be operating in a different world. They started to cross the street despite shouts from the crowd. They had almost made it when an ambulance heading for the explosion site hit them, sending the man's glasses on a slow arc through the air before they smashed on the ground.
People raced to the couple. Fortunately, they were able to get to their feet and were helped into the ambulance.
We found ourselves calmly discussing where exactly the bomb had gone off. There had been little smoke so we thought it may have been detonated at the subway station where we had been heading, in which case there would be massive loss of life.
What surprised us on later reflection was that we felt no fear, nor did we detect panic in the crowd. Rather, there were looks of shock and sadness. The gunfire had been a worry, but it turned out a police officer had fired his weapon in the air attempting to scare back the crowd in case a secondary bomb was waiting to go off.
We chatted with a few people who spoke English while watching the ambulances, now heading back with their cargo of injured innocents. Overhead a surveillance helicopter circled the scene, dropping lower and lower.
Still not knowing what had happened, other than the obvious, we eventually headed back to our hotel and the TV set.
Thankfully, the blast had not gone off in the subway. There were no fatalities other than the bomber. Among the 32 people injured were 15 police officers, most of whom were released from hospital the same day.
Apparently, the young man had been targeting police, and was suspected of acting in the cause of Kurdish independence. At the police station on the square, additional officers had been brought in because of concerns over possible protests at the recent Republic Day parade. The suicide bomber had tried to jump on a bus filled with officers and had been pushed back when the detonation occurred.
We decided to continue with our day even though we discovered the Grand Bazaar and Spice Market were closed on Sunday. We opted for the Cevahir shopping mall, Europe's largest, with a four-floor amusement centre filled with a roller coaster, bumper cars, gentle rides for the younger set and scary rides for the older ones.
It was also filled with happy, laughing people carrying on with life despite the terrible events a few short miles away.
We had made a good choice. The people of Istanbul also made a good choice. They could have chosen to be afraid, to stay home, to not do anything out of fear. But this is a very, very old nation.
There is little that has not occurred in Turkey. People dealt with this event as they have dealt with wars and with earthquakes. They kept on living and enjoying life.
At the end of that strange day, Bev and I discussed our feelings and what we had seen. We can never understand why the young man thought that by killing police, and himself, he would advance his cause, any more than we can understand people in other countries who suddenly walk into a school, an office, a factory and start shooting innocent people.
This was such a waste of a young person's life. It left us with a feeling of sadness and wondering what he could have become had he chosen life.
Maybe Bev put it best when she said: "What he did was so wrong, but I feel so sad for his mother and his family."
I think that after that strange Sunday, we're ready to enjoy each day a bit more.
Andy Fraser lives in Chilliwack, B.C.