It was a heated duel. Truth be told, I was losing. I forgot how many times the computer had beat me in Connect Four (3 in a row). I lost track of the number of headlines that included corruption or Charbonneau as I read from the Montreal Gazette app for the first time in months (7/10 top headlines). I couldn't remember the exact lyrics of the last song that came through the shop's speakers (hadn't heard pop music from home for a long time). And, I was back at Mango – having lost that argument – a four floor mega clothing store that Maya convinced me to return to, as she tried on everything, and anything, to leverage the strength of our dollars against the cheap, Turkish Lira priced dresses, shirts and skirts.

But I didn't mind. Mango had a row of movie theatre seats that I happily shared with other Turkish men who fiddled with their iPhones and tried, in vain, to chat me up in their language.

Then the store doors came down. Mango wasn't due to close for another hour, but down the steel shutters came. Nobody seemed alarmed. The shouts, claps, and cheers from Istiklal Cadessi street were now barely audible.

The steel slab eventually reopened, and clanked shut, three more times. Not a glint of concern from the other patient boyfriends. Not an inch of hesitation from the army of Mangoites folding and carting their clothing up stairs, escalators and back doors.

I spent the length of a movie in movie theatre seating, the only plot twist being two t shirts and a sweater (and no skirts!) had to be purchased from the till on the fourth floor, then the first floor. They all came from different collections, you see, so you can't pay for that t shirt here, Canadian tourists.

VAT refund receipts in hand, a security guard in a black suit, sporting an all too official earpiece, escorted us to a special elevator. Down to the basement. Then out a back door. I guessed Mango had actually closed a while ago.

For me, the tears came first. Maya started to cough. Flung into a back alley behind Istanbul's shopping nerve center near Taksim, the cheers and claps from the roaring crowd were gone. Peppery smoke took its place.

We ran into the first open door we saw. The locals beckoned us in. They shut the door tight. We grabbed a table across from murals of doves and rock stars. Aching Turkish music readily replaced my once pop tunes, two pints of Efes replaced my now empty bottle of water, just then used to blot the tears out of our eyes.

Other men, burly, tough Turkish men, ambled in, breathing and crying heavily. Was the acrid cloud going to pass? Well fortified, we ventured out, eager to cross Istiklal – the long, wide, pedestrian avenue where the Taksim Square protestors and Turkish police fought a battle of attrition – to get to the live music that we knew remained ignorant to the outside world.

But the smoke was too strong. We went the other way, following the pointing fingers of barmen and kebabmen and old men playing backgammon oblivious or impervious to the invisible smoke. We would swoop around and take another route, further down the main drag well behind the front lines.

Ten minutes of hills, and backtracking, and Maya snapping iPhone shots of graffitied protest signs, Istiklal was in sight. A loud thump, and then the clang of a metal canister – that was the cue to flee. In an instant, the half empty street was full, replaced by a stampede of teenagers, men and women in gas masks or brandishing handkerchiefs, running away.

We followed, as I pried Maya away from another photo op of a red faced man in a gas mask stenciled on a brick wall. Down the hill we went, past a group of locals that made a makeshift bar outside a beer store using empty fruit crates, past the swanky club across the street where tuxedoed bouncers refused entry to all but a few (tall Russian looking girls), past fruit stands, meatball shops, antique stores, more men playing backgammon, and even more men standing idle, protected by their gas masks.

It stung the eyes and burned the throat. The crowd thinned. We found ourselves on a familiar street where we had browsed antique watches and drank lemon soda earlier in the week. The irritation lifted.

We ambled toward a tea shop, upset that we missed the live music, but kind of giddy that for us, the Turkish protests had become a first hand experience rather than a second hand news account. It wasn't dangerous so much as it was fascinating: Saturday night life in Europe's biggest city – backgammon, Efes, kebabs, tea, shopping etc. – went on untouched. Even the Mango store clerks didn't flinch.