The other night I had just finished a late class at a bank headquarters outside of the city. The return trip by shuttle took longer than usual, owing to traffic caused by a bus accident,  as well as by the ongoing expansion of the metro line, which broke ground this past week. In the ever-expanding megacity that is Istanbul, you get used to such delays.

So it was nearly 10 o’clock when I arrived back in Kadiköy. The summer solstice had arrived, the longest days of the year, and even at that hour the last traces of the sun had just passed over the horizon, on their way over Europe and on toward the Americas.

Exiting from the metro tunnel near the Nautilus shopping mall, I was walking the short distance to my flat just over the main road. The metro line here, which also connects to the Marmaray line (which runs beneath the Bosphorous over to the European side, the only metro in the world to connect  two continents), is very new, and the whole area looks very modern. I was tired, and just looking forward to getting home, cracking open a beer, and tuning in to the Brazil-Cameroon World Cup match with my flatmates.

Near the tunnel that runs under the overpass, an old woman and her children were sitting beside the entrance. They were not Turkish, and they looked very tired and poor. Beside the woman, there was a dirty mattress and some bits of clothing. As I passed, the woman murmured praise to God, hoping that I would give her some change. I searched my pockets, but unfortunately didn’t have anything. I apologized, and walked on, leaving the woman to her prayers. One of the children, out of curiosity, followed me under the bridge, but I heard his mother call him, so he disappeared back into the tunnel, and I continued home.

Were they Syrian refugees? I thought so, but couldn’t be sure. It wouldn’t be unusual at all. The ongoing civil war just south of the border has seen more than  one million refugees spill into Turkey over the past few years. Most of them are in government camps along the Turkish-Syrian border. But many have made their way here, to Istanbul.  They, too, have become part of the ever-expanding cityscape, the latest arrivals. Many of them can be seen near Eminönu, near the heart of the city, hanging out dispiritedly near the ferry stations and metro stations.

But this was the first time I had seen any in my own neighborhood, not five minutes’ walk from my flat. Still, it was getting dark, and the sight of a poor woman on the streets with her children is, unfortunately, not an unusual sight in Istanbul. Many are gypsies, and sometimes you will be sitting in a nice café having dinner and a woman, babe at her breast, will approach the table with an outstretched hand.

Regretting that I hadn’t any change to offer, and feeling guilty that I just wanted to get home, set my teaching bag  down, and watch the World Cup, I forgot about those sad, lonely figures in the dusk.

****

In the morning, I was on my way to catch the bus. The streets of Kadiköy were busy as usual, the shops open and bustling, the street sellers hawking simit bread and cheese, and bottled water, and people were on their way to catch the buses and ferries.

Suddenly, I passed another mother and her children, virtually identical in look and dress from the ones I’d seen the night before. Only there was a man with them too, a thin, tired-looking man who sat beside the woman on the sidewalk. In front of them was a collection cup, and a sign, hand-written in crayon on a piece of cardboard. It said, in a scrawl of Turkish, that they were from Syria, and needed help.

An old man who was walking in front of me stopped and put some change in the cup, and said something in a soft voice. Following his example, I dropped a few coins in myself. The woman thanked me, and I continued on. A few paces on, I saw a few more, with similar signs and collection cups. So they were Syrian, after all, I thought.

It was then that it hit me how much the Syrian conflict, the impact of the ongoing civil war, has devastated its people. I mean, it’s one thing to read about refugees in the news, but it’s quite another to see them in real life, squatting in your neighborhood on the very streets you pass through every day on your way from your comfortable bed to your comfortable job, with money in your pockets, freshly showered and rested and nothing to be especially worried about.

You realize that the plight of the Syrian refugees is spreading, and will continue to spread far into the foreseeable future. And now with neighboring Iraq imploding, you wonder too if the Syrian refugees will soon have company on the streets of Istanbul.  You wonder what kind of problems may accompany the arrival of more refugees. From what the news reports suggest, many Syrians have sought shelter in abandoned buildings, and on the outskirts of neighborhoods, like those I saw camped out near the metro station on my way home from work.

Will there be a rise in crime? Or will the Turks’ apparent tolerance of the refugees at some point turn to hostility? There was, for example, a report last week in Ankara of Turk locals setting fire to an old house that was home to many Syrian refugees – the locals accused the Syrians of having assaulted one of their own, a Turkish local, in the street. At this point, at least, it seems to have been an isolated incident.

Of course, the ones we see on the street are generally, it would seem, the poor. Many of the upper classes have also fled war-torn Syria. But they at least have the luxury of money, education  and a certain status that insulates them from some of the harsher realities of displacement. For example, one of my colleagues had drinks the other night with a friend from Syria. The friend had managed to find work teaching English in Saudi Arabia, where she was making enough money to have a short holiday in Istanbul.

For those that have made their way to the streets of Kadikoy, there are few, if any, such hopeful outlets. They are the dispossessed, like Steinbeck’s Okies, without a home to which they can return, not now anyway. There are the mosques, of course, as well as charities. Generally, the philosophy here is that, as fellow Muslims, the Syrians should be helped. And Turks in general take pride in treating guests well. But more are sure to come, which could put the famous Turkish hospitality to a severe test.

I remember an account a Turkish farmer gave a journalist some time ago. Syrian refugees had stripped nearly all the cherries from his orchard, leaving him with virtually no harvest.

“I realize they are Muslims and we must help them,” the farmer said. “But surely, there must be other Muslims besides us.”

James Tressler was a reporter for The Times-Standard. His work has also appeared in the Czech Business Weekly and The Prague Post.  He lives in Istanbul.