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Instinct told me to stand up. Shaking like an addict, I drew myself up to my haunches and pushed with my legs. I rose to my full height for just an instant before something malfunctioned and my whole body veered rigidly to one side. I fell over like a wind-up toy on a rumpled bed sheet; my shoulder hit the pavement first, then my face.

Blood welled on my cheekbone as a hazy understanding began to form. I patted down my pockets: My petty cash was gone, as was my wallet, my leather belt and my Swiss Army knife. I felt along my belly for my hidden money belt, but it was gone, too -- passport, traveler's checks and all. Oddly, my red spiral notebook and my recently purchased Penguin anthology of Middle Eastern mythology were still jammed into my back pocket.

Pulling myself into an upright position, I took a few deep, deliberate breaths. Sitting there, drugged and dazed in the dim park, I strained to reconstruct what had just happened.

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Up until the moment I lost consciousness, my day in Istanbul had already been exceptional -- enlivened by unexpected camaraderie, by uncommon novelties. In one afternoon, I'd met more strange people than the rest of my brief days in Turkey combined. Trying to determine at what point I went wrong would be no easy task.

Technically, I wasn't supposed to be adrift in the city that day, since I'd been scheduled to join a pre-planned Cairo-bound overland trip the day before. However, when the truck and trip leader never arrived for the pre-departure meeting, I found myself with an extra day to kill in Istanbul.

Since I'd already spent three days touring Istanbul's marvelous historical attractions -- from the lavish Ottoman halls of Topkapi Palace to the crowded dagger-and-houka-pipe stands of the Great Bazaar -- I decided to devote my extra day in Istanbul to random wandering. Strolling the parks and alleys of the Sultanahmet tourist district with no particular goal, I spent my morning taking in the details I'd been too busy to notice when I first arrived.

Istanbul has long enjoyed a reputation of mystery and intrigue -- of East and West commingling in grand palaces and smoky alleyways: a place where dreamers, schemers and pilgrims go to lose themselves. As I walked that day through the ancient neighborhood where the Bosphorous and the Golden Horn meet the Sea of Marmara, everything I saw seemed to contain a hidden currency. When a tout in Sultanahmet Square bullied me into his carpet shop, I was interested less in the Persian-styled rugs than the 1500-year-old Byzantine column that slanted crazily through the recently poured concrete floor of the showroom.

When I asked an old Turkish man how I might find an "eczane," he gave me directions to the pharmacy in shrill, German-inflected English that made him sound like Col. Klink from "Hogan's Heroes." When I walked past the earthquake refugees camped out in the grass along the Hippodrome, I noticed that several of them clutched cell phones.

A little gypsy girl selling candy near the tram station wore an oversized Metallica T-shirt cinched at the waist like a dress. Cats crouched in doorways and alleyways; sea gulls soared over the minarets of the Blue Mosque. A neatly dressed Turkish boy sitting on the tram grinned shyly at me and whispered "Fuck you," as if in greeting.

Sometime around noon, I was approached near the Galata Bridge by an African teenager. His skin was as black as coffee, and he flopped after me in a loose-fitting pair of rubber sandals. "Hey man," he called to me, "where are you going today?"

Since this same guy had already approached me two other times in the past three days, I decided to yank his chain a little. "I'm going to Senegal today," I said. "Don't you want to come with me?"

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