was her real name -
hated, ‘Traffic Dawn, your eye in the sky’.
One advantage of working for a radio station as opposed to a
TV channel was that she could quite easily leave the Traffic Dawn persona at
the station and slip back into her true identity once she had finished for the
day and nobody, apart from her friends, would be any the wiser. But that was
all the advantages she could think of.
From as far back as she could remember, she had wanted to be
a TV presenter. Growing up in the UK, she had always been fascinated by
children’s programmes - not for their content, but the way the presenters
interacted with their audiences, captivating impressionable little minds with
stories and poems, or making useful things out of everyday household items. She
had applied to as many TV channels as she could, once she’d finished her degree
in Communication Studies, but nobody was hiring without experience. One helpful
rejection letter suggested that she should try radio work and, once she’d
served her apprenticeship there, then they may consider her for a role in TV.
Her Turkish mother and English father split up the day she
graduated from university; they later told her that they hadn’t been getting on
for years and were ‘Just waiting for the right time’ before going their
separate ways - she back to Ankara in Turkey and he back to his alter
ego, namely a transvestite called Monica. It was whilst visiting her mother
that she met one of the sound engineers from the radio station, in a local bar,
who told her about a vacancy for a ‘roving reporter’ based in Istanbul. He went
into far too much detail about how the station he worked for was part of a
network of phantom stations scattered throughout the country, all sharing the
one resource in Ankara to save on costs. And, with modern technology the way it
was, as long as you had ‘Eyes on the ground’, as he described it, the
unsuspecting listener was none the wiser that their ‘local’ radio station was
actually being broadcast from a modern office building in the country’s
capital.
The next morning, she phoned the number he had given her and
was ecstatic when they asked her to come in for an interview. Her euphoria
dissipated somewhat when they told her that the position for the ‘eyes on the
ground’ reporter for Istanbul had already been filled, but there was still a
vacancy for ‘eyes in the air’, which would entail reporting on the state of the
city’s traffic from a helicopter. Her enthusiasm was dampened even more by the
fact that she would be expected to be on air from 6 am to 6 pm, six days a
week. But, with little else going on in her life, and at the tender age of 24
with nothing to lose, she accepted the role when it was offered to her.
She was now sitting next to Devrim, a rather rotund agency
pilot with a wandering eye and a penchant for Top Gun . Unfortunately for
him, the mirrored Ray Bans and slick-backed black hair made him look more like
a Sicilian gangster than Tom Cruise. He’d asked her out on a date, the first
time they’d flown together, which she politely declined, stating that she just
wasn’t ready for a relationship. She didn’t consider herself unattractive, with
her long wavy blonde hair and slim figure that she’d inherited from her mother
(or was it Monica?), and she could certainly do better than the letch beside
her, but for the time being she was concentrating on her career. There were
worse jobs than hers, she consoled herself, spotting a small fishing boat being
buffeted by the waves some 500 feet below them.
‘There, to your left. I can see a line of brake lights,’ she
said into her mike, as she scanned the main arterial roads in and out of
Istanbul for any signs congestion.
‘No, just traffic signals,’ came the reply through her
headset, in heavily-accented English.
‘Dawn, you’re on air in thirty seconds. Anything to report?
Over.’ The voice of Seb, her producer, broke into the
hated, ‘Traffic Dawn, your eye in the sky’.
One advantage of working for a radio station as opposed to a
TV channel was that she could quite easily leave the Traffic Dawn persona at
the station and slip back into her true identity once she had finished for the
day and nobody, apart from her friends, would be any the wiser. But that was
all the advantages she could think of.
From as far back as she could remember, she had wanted to be
a TV presenter. Growing up in the UK, she had always been fascinated by
children’s programmes - not for their content, but the way the presenters
interacted with their audiences, captivating impressionable little minds with
stories and poems, or making useful things out of everyday household items. She
had applied to as many TV channels as she could, once she’d finished her degree
in Communication Studies, but nobody was hiring without experience. One helpful
rejection letter suggested that she should try radio work and, once she’d
served her apprenticeship there, then they may consider her for a role in TV.
Her Turkish mother and English father split up the day she
graduated from university; they later told her that they hadn’t been getting on
for years and were ‘Just waiting for the right time’ before going their
separate ways - she back to Ankara in Turkey and he back to his alter
ego, namely a transvestite called Monica. It was whilst visiting her mother
that she met one of the sound engineers from the radio station, in a local bar,
who told her about a vacancy for a ‘roving reporter’ based in Istanbul. He went
into far too much detail about how the station he worked for was part of a
network of phantom stations scattered throughout the country, all sharing the
one resource in Ankara to save on costs. And, with modern technology the way it
was, as long as you had ‘Eyes on the ground’, as he described it, the
unsuspecting listener was none the wiser that their ‘local’ radio station was
actually being broadcast from a modern office building in the country’s
capital.
The next morning, she phoned the number he had given her and
was ecstatic when they asked her to come in for an interview. Her euphoria
dissipated somewhat when they told her that the position for the ‘eyes on the
ground’ reporter for Istanbul had already been filled, but there was still a
vacancy for ‘eyes in the air’, which would entail reporting on the state of the
city’s traffic from a helicopter. Her enthusiasm was dampened even more by the
fact that she would be expected to be on air from 6 am to 6 pm, six days a
week. But, with little else going on in her life, and at the tender age of 24
with nothing to lose, she accepted the role when it was offered to her.
She was now sitting next to Devrim, a rather rotund agency
pilot with a wandering eye and a penchant for Top Gun . Unfortunately for
him, the mirrored Ray Bans and slick-backed black hair made him look more like
a Sicilian gangster than Tom Cruise. He’d asked her out on a date, the first
time they’d flown together, which she politely declined, stating that she just
wasn’t ready for a relationship. She didn’t consider herself unattractive, with
her long wavy blonde hair and slim figure that she’d inherited from her mother
(or was it Monica?), and she could certainly do better than the letch beside
her, but for the time being she was concentrating on her career. There were
worse jobs than hers, she consoled herself, spotting a small fishing boat being
buffeted by the waves some 500 feet below them.
‘There, to your left. I can see a line of brake lights,’ she
said into her mike, as she scanned the main arterial roads in and out of
Istanbul for any signs congestion.
‘No, just traffic signals,’ came the reply through her
headset, in heavily-accented English.
‘Dawn, you’re on air in thirty seconds. Anything to report?
Over.’ The voice of Seb, her producer, broke into the
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