It’s Too Dangerous

I’ve been warned not to go many places. It seems every city, especially in foreign countries (not the U.S.), a concerned citizen will warn me about the perils of some particular neighborhood.

Alright, being careful while traveling is obviously a good advice. However, I have often found these warnings unnecessary, and have often regarded them as classist prejudices. But it seems that people, even if informing you with disgust, take a certain pride in the dangerous parts of their city being ‘really dangerous.’ It is to the point, at least in my experience, that they exaggerate like hell. In Panama City, tourist police would physically not let us enter El Chorrillo, an area next to Casco Viejo, which apparently, we shouldn’t have been walking around in either. There didn’t seem to be much of a problem with the area to our gringo eyes. In their case, however, they were investing in their job security. An additional ‘fact’ about Panama: Colombian immigrants will break into your house and steal all your possessions if you don’t double deadbolt. In Santiago de Chile, the way people talked you would have thought there were armies of crackhead Peruvian gangs hiding in the urban parks of Santa Lucia and San Cristobal. The first week in Santiago I stayed with a host family in a middle-class suburb, who, I recall, warned me against using the metro. It turns out the Santiago metro was one of the safest, cleanest, and best run I had ever seen. It was safer than using my electrical outlets, for sure.

Here in Izmir people warn me about a neighborhood called Kadifekale near a castle on top of a hill, which I want to visit, as being ‘way to dangerous for me’. Once a friend conceded that I may be able to go if I didn’t take anything of value, including my I.D. or house keys. ‘How should I get there and back?’, I asked. ‘Right, you probably just shouldn’t go,’ he concluded again. Another area of imminent violence in Izmir is Basmane, which upon my arrival at a hotel there last July a friend of a friend (now my friend) ‘rescued’ me from its clutches to stay with him at his apartment in a more suitable part of the city (not that I’m not grateful for the hospitality, Uğur). Finally, a student recently told me that by walking through the park to get home, as I’ve done every night for six months, he will likely see my body on the news.

Again, being cautious is important. And perhaps I’ve been extremely lucky not to have been accosted before; in LA, Lima, Buenos Aires, Mexico City, Esmeraldes, Baltimore, Istanbul, Paris, London, etcetera. But I still can’t help but to giggle a little when people tell me that in their town someone will cut off my arm in order to steal my watch.

-Charles P. Pearson