Downstairs

The bar was full when we arrived. It was Thursday, a local band was playing, and the downstairs room was small enough to feel crowded before the night had properly started. There was nowhere sensible to sit, so we stayed outside and waited.

Every time the door opened, music came up the stairs with warm air and cigarette smoke. Someone entered, someone else left, and we tried to see whether space had appeared inside. For almost an hour, it did not.

Around eleven, the room finally emptied enough for us to go downstairs. The place was dark, narrow, and loud, with the band only a few meters away. There was hardly any distance between performers and audience, which made the whole room feel less like a concert and more like a crowded gathering.

I had not heard the band live for a long time. They looked older than I remembered. I probably did too, but that thought did not occur to me then.

The music was loud enough to make conversation useless, so we stopped trying. We stood with our drinks, moved whenever someone needed to pass, and let the room push everyone closer together. At some point, I went to the toilet and found a short queue.

Then the drummer appeared. He looked at us and said they were waiting for him on stage. It was difficult to argue with that, so we let him go first.

A minute later, another member of the band arrived with the same problem. He also said they were waiting for him. I looked at the closed toilet door and told him, “There is already someone in there they are waiting for.”

He laughed and went in anyway.

That was the moment I understood why I liked the place. In a large concert hall, musicians disappear behind the stage and become distant figures under lights. Here, the band had to stand in the same toilet queue as everyone else.

Later, a woman near the entrance went outside to make a phone call. Several men suddenly became very interested in the area near the door. Someone beside me noticed it too and said, “Fresh air must be popular tonight.”

The band started another song, and everyone turned back toward the music. Nothing important happened after that. We stayed for a while, listened, talked badly over the noise, and eventually climbed the stairs again.

Outside, Ankara felt unusually quiet, and my ears kept ringing. Years later, I forgot most of the songs, what I drank, and exactly who stood where. I still remember waiting outside, finally going downstairs, and two musicians trying to reach the same toilet while their band waited for them.

For a small bar, that was enough of a backstage story.