When No One Is Truly Safe

摘要

Cafer yilmaz was at work in his bakery on a broad boulevard in Istanbul's modern new financial district at about 11 a.m. last Thursday when a tremendous bang shook down the building's windows and walls. Across the street, yellow smoke poured from the 18-story headquarters of the British-owned HSBC bank, where a pickup truck packed with homemade bombs had just set off a mighty explosion. "That first moment was not at all like you would imagine from the movies," Yilmaz says. "No one was screaming or running. If you had slapped me, I would probably have just stared blankly at you." Twelve minutes later, in the city's historic Beyoglu district, Victoria Short, wife of the British consul general, stepped across the narrow street from her husband's office to pick up milk for his coffee. She paused to chat with the shop owner as a green catering van sped up the narrow street, smashed into tall wrought-iron gates at the corner of the walled consulate compound and blew up.