Summer in the city: Elif Shafak on a night of disaster in Istanbul

In 1999, as temperatures rose, tempers flared - and then a rumble began to rise from the ground

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It was the height of summer in Istanbul, the combination of heat and humidity so suffocating that we had all become insomniacs - the cats on the streets, the people in their homes and the seagulls perched on the rooftops.

I was 28, and lived in a small flat on Kazanci Yokuu, the Steep Street of Cauldron Makers. It was a noisy place - chaotic, restless, dissatisfied. I had saved up money to swap my yellow typewriter for a Power Macintosh and now it towered over my desk, this gargantuan machine. I was intimidated not so much by its presence as by what I might write into it. In the afternoons, as I sat by the window jabbing away at the keyboard, I listened to the sounds of the city - the rolling dice from the backgammon boards at the teahouse nearby, the hum of cars and trucks, the beeping of horns, the shouting and swearing, an endless rage against other people's mothers. As the heat built up in the summer of 1999, so did the levels of anger and frustration in the city.