Turks justly pride themselves on their hospitality, but on a busy day Istanbullus can be as rude as any New Yorker.

Indeed, more so. You could say that being rude, or kaba, is almost an art form here in the city by the Bosphorus.

Let us look at a scenario. It’s late afternoon, and we’re at a busy intersection. At one of lights, a taxi driver will edge, maneuver around the car in front of him, drift —no, insinuates himself — into the middle of the intersection. Another motorist, with the same intentions, also finds himself in the middle of the intersection.

The two drivers are blocking the intersection, the lights are changing. The other cars all move forward, trying to get through. Suddenly, the taxi driver gets out. He starts shouting obscenties at the driver of the car standing in his way of rush-hour glory. The driver gets out and shouts back.

The fact that they are in fact the cause of the present deadlock — if they had just waited patiently, instead of forcing themselves into the intersection, the present standoff wouldn’t have happened — is immaterial.

What matters at this point, it would seem, is who can shout the loudest, and longest. The obscenities pour forth, escalating in vileness. The antagonists reach back several generations. The ghosts of past lives, maternal figures past and present, are exhumed and vilified.

The most evil curses imaginable are uttered over the increasingly loud car horns from all the other commuters.

Then, just as inscrutably, and suddenly — just when you think the two men are going to come to blows, or worse, they turn away and get in their respective vehicles. With one last clenched fist, one last volley, they untangle their cars and continue on. Within a few minutes, the traffic has disappeared, and in the new silence, you’d think that the whole episode was merely an ugly dream.

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This is the art of kaba. The going so far beyond a mere “Yo’ momma’s so fat —” insult, to totally slash-and-burn a person’s ancestry, without getting oneself killed in the process — and to just walk away from it two minutes later … Yes, it is a subtle art, melded no doubt by the fire and heavy pounding of time.

Turks in general are hot-blooded (they even like to compare themselves to southern Italians). Under normal conditions, this ancient characteristic (is it Mediterranean? Is it Ottoman? Or does it trace back even further, to the Turks’ Central Asian horseback-riding roots?) translates into warmth, friendliness. Turks like to treat their guests well.

But under duress, the hot blood can easily boil. Angels in peace; devils in war, right? Yes, to a degree.

Fortunately, however, this temperamental quality can also retreat the other way, quickly dissipate, as we saw in the episode above.

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And yet, just when you think you’ve got it figured out, something surprises you. Cities like Istanbul are always full of the unexpected.

Take the other day. I was on my way home from the school, and got a dolmuş, or shared taxi. We were cruising along busy Bagdat Caddesi, the dolmuş full of people, when suddenly we felt the crash of impact. I was sitting up in the passenger seat next to the driver.

I looked out and saw that we had hit the door of a parked car. The man, who was getting out of the car, apparently hadn’t looked to see if there was any oncoming traffic.

Fortunately, the man was not hit. The damage to the car appeared fairly minimal — the door was pushed back the wrong way, so that it would have to be taken to the shop. The dolmuş may have had a dent, I don’t know.

Anyway, our driver stopped immediately — he wasn’t going that fast, luckily — and got out.

Here we go, I thought. I was expecting the usual volley of high-octane insults, the heavy, threatening gestures. This was an actual collision, not a mere matter of right of way. Would they all-out come to blows, these two? Ah, it was a lovely spring afternoon, with the first buds ripening in the trees. One could even say the birds were chirping … Ring the bell! LET’S GET READY TO RUMMMBBLE!

It didn’t happen.

Believe it or not, the two parties conducted themselves in a manner resembling civil people. They each inspected the damage, and a third man, who’d witnessed everything, even offered to help dislodge the dolmuş from where it was jammed in the bent-back door.

The driver got back in the dolmuş, and popped it in slow reverse, while the other two held the door. Then the driver got out, and they conversed, civilly it would appear. They scratched their heads curiously, as if wondering about how such a collision could have occurred. There were no sworn oaths, or obscenties. The virtue of the ancestors’ spirits was left in tact, and they were allowed to rest peacefully.

Smart phones were taken out (ah, I knew we called them “smart” for a reason, if they are used correctly), and contact information was peacefully exchanged.

The passengers, meanwhile, who were mostly bored housewives whose afternoon shopping had been interrupted, grew restless.

“Can we go now?” One of them asked.

The driver told us all to get out. There were plenty of dolmuş, and we would have to get another. He even reached into the change box next to the steering wheel and, counting out the coins one by one, gave us our money back.

Within a minute or so, another dolmuş came, and we crowded in and resumed our journey to Kadıköy.

Along the way, I put the incident behind, and returned to quiet, spring time thoughts. But later, I thought again about it, the rareness of that scene in busy, crowded Istanbul. What were the odds that two Istanbullus could get in a traffic accident and deal with it in a calm, “civilized” (I hate that word) manner? OK, I mean — manage to avoid even raising their voices? Trust me, friend, if you made that bet on a regular basis, you would lose a lot of money.

Still, it was a nice thing to see, on that random Thursday afternoon; it was one of those eventualities that remind you that city life is just that — an eventuality, full of accident and incident, and you never can predict just what may happen at any given moment.

Sure, we do live in trying times — the age of terror — and just as often as not a bomb could go off somewhere, maybe even close by. And then, without warning, the art of kaba, which you thought you’d mastered, translates into the more refined arts of patience, empathy — even kindness.

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James Tressler, a former Lost Coast resident, is a writer and teacher. He lives in Istanbul.