· The vastness and complexity of this city. Taking the bus east into Anatolia from Istanbul this morning. An hour through city expressways and past mile upon mile of industrial tenements … and we’re still in the city, but already so far from the small ancient port, royalist and market district of Sultanahmet where we have stayed. Here the horizon could be Burnaby’s or Scarborough, if not for the many towering minarets. A vast concrete shopping plaza appears – Metro World – while we are offered tea in Turkish on this very comfortable long-haul bus to Safranbolu, about seven hours away. (We are the only tourists among a handful of passengers.) 13 million people – but that’s likely still a guess by the experts. Almost half the population of Canada tumbling together on these hills and shores.
· We arrived in Istanbul (more than two hours late from Glasgow) in the dark and the centre of a major festive five-day holiday: Eid, the end of Ramadan. Our backpacks taking two spaces everywhere, we jostle our way into an impossibly crowded rail car, then even more crowded tram into the city, then along teeming sidewalks and squares, always half lost but guided by helpful strangers and (as it turns out) very reliable signage, until we finally arrive at our pension for the night.
· Even in the small corners of the city where we walk and take the trams (near what have become tourist sites and markets), we are surrounded by visual contrasts and contradictions. The women for example. Some in full black covering, others with hair flowing, dressed as fashion statements, still other women, sometimes grannies in traditional woven dresses and scarves, having a smoke in the park … and texting intently.
· By late afternoon, the sidewalks and quieter Gulane Park teem with families, couples and small groups of youthful friends out for a stroll, some shopping for Eid gifts, many sampling the street foods on offer: roasted chestnuts and corn, various kinds of kepabs and sandwiches, uncountable forms of delicious sweets (we keep being offered samples), ice creams, fresh pomegranate or orange juice. The atmosphere is festive, energized, only the streets sellers calling urgently.
· This city of sultans has been a centre of immense, really immense wealth garishly exhibited in palaces, baths, mosques and their exquisite tile-ceramic, jeweled objects and painted surfaces found everywhere – see the first Istanbul photo album. I begin to find the plain and pleasing curved architectural lines – arches, domes, porticos – dizzying as I look up into the far-off circles of painted flowers and other shapes, inviting you to turn and turn and turn again, like the dervish dancers we experienced one evening, only in slow motion.
· I lay out on the hot marble circle of the 400-year-old Cemberlitas Hamami, feeling the heat move up through the wet towel around my waist and every naked limbs, looking up into the dark domed ceiling with its starry circles up sunlit air vents. The low guttural voices of male masseurs echo in the vast marble space, a language but sounding pre-verbal, animal. The soaping I receive turns my person into all body, not the subject of any tenderness but more like a slab of meat, exhilarating in its foreignness but not something of pleasure. But the overall effect of the steam and heat, the darkness, the deep male voices, the soapy massage, the circles of light – all this together leaves me soothed, physically pliable, feeling remarkably whole.
· I find myself seduced by the night time shapes and shadows of the monumental 1,400 year old Haghia Sofia, the vast Byzantine church of churches. Domes, arches, porticos, the squared and sloping lines of buttresses and out buildings, the towering minaret (the Ottomans turned Sophia into a mosque in the 15thC) … light and shadows everywhere. Sometimes appearing like the ‘church of holy wisdom it was built to, sometimes like a mid-19thC Manchester factory, sometimes like some futuristic or fantasy kingdom, today Sophia’ night lights emphasize its immensity, mystery, capacity to generate awe. Inside the effect is hardly different: the vast nave covered with its huge dome 180 feet above, the giant seraphims always about to float above off the pendentives below the dome. The throngs of Turkish and out of country visitors (every place teems with people during these several days) become miniatures inside Sofia’s immensity and dim interiors. The worn smooth buttery surfaces of the marble steps remind me of similarly worn rock surfaces on the cave floors of Kakadu – the weight and oils of human feet, years upon years upon years. The rolling marble floor upstairs: a reminder of the impossible weight of this building which, filled with the spirit of gravity, wants so much to sink into the earth. Later, outside in the fresh air and the night, I enjoy moving slowly around Sofia, watching her great solid Rubenesque immensities, curves and squares in shadows and light, move and change as I move, in some slow ease time and with an odd, surprising lightness.
· We take the crowded (yes, crowds again)public excursion boat up the Bophorous towards the Black Sea: Asia to the east, Europe to the west … an ancient and layered and still lingering divide, although crossed for so long and so profitably by traders in spices, perfumes and silk. So not far along we pass the still crumbling remains of the Fortress of Asia Castle that stand across the water from the crumbling Fortress of Europe Castle. Before that the grand Ottoman Baroque Dolmabahce Palace sprawls elegantly, if that is possible, along the water’s edge. And all along are the colourful, grand summer waterfront houses (yalis) of wealthy Instanbulis from recent centuries: many windowed and doored with white and cream trim, and maroon, ochre, red – many colours – walls. Beneath some of these mansions were once fishing villages and early yalis. Cultures like the Cossacks have seeped out of the Black Sea along here, influencing the architecture. Here we are awash in a northsoutheastwest crossroads, currents beneath currents beneath currents.
· The male voices of the Bilal (I believe) calling people to prayer from speakers atop the minarets. For us the everywhere public intrusive presence of this voice, booming across shampoo and cellphone billboards (and before sunrise into our dark bedroom). I begin to wonder about the fact and impact of this always male voice, so authoritatively present in every midst, sometimes gentler (as in the village of Safranbolu early this morning as I write), but in Istanbul feeling loudly hectoring, demanding. (On men and women: On the bus ride east today out of Istanbul, Betty remarks on how the women in the lunch break bus stop washroom appeared so different than they often do as we pass on the sidewalk: scarves off, long loose hair tumbling out, sociable banter and laughter.)
· Other memories, impressions … A drink with friends Betty, Roger (past Amnesty colleagues), Pat and their friend Betty on Serkeci Platform 19 at the terminus of the Orient Express, before watching the dervishes pray and whirl. The sidewalk man with a stand holding three small rabbits and small board with grooves containing many coloured slips of paper (passersby ‘ask’ a rabbit to choose a slip, your fortune), and the pleased young couple who must have heard what they wish for, but told us that the rabbits could even choose a fortune in English. Meeting Wendy on the road from Sydney and the pleasant conversations with her. How little we experienced of Istanbul in those first several days!
· We arrived in Istanbul (more than two hours late from Glasgow) in the dark and the centre of a major festive five-day holiday: Eid, the end of Ramadan. Our backpacks taking two spaces everywhere, we jostle our way into an impossibly crowded rail car, then even more crowded tram into the city, then along teeming sidewalks and squares, always half lost but guided by helpful strangers and (as it turns out) very reliable signage, until we finally arrive at our pension for the night.
· Even in the small corners of the city where we walk and take the trams (near what have become tourist sites and markets), we are surrounded by visual contrasts and contradictions. The women for example. Some in full black covering, others with hair flowing, dressed as fashion statements, still other women, sometimes grannies in traditional woven dresses and scarves, having a smoke in the park … and texting intently.
· By late afternoon, the sidewalks and quieter Gulane Park teem with families, couples and small groups of youthful friends out for a stroll, some shopping for Eid gifts, many sampling the street foods on offer: roasted chestnuts and corn, various kinds of kepabs and sandwiches, uncountable forms of delicious sweets (we keep being offered samples), ice creams, fresh pomegranate or orange juice. The atmosphere is festive, energized, only the streets sellers calling urgently.
· This city of sultans has been a centre of immense, really immense wealth garishly exhibited in palaces, baths, mosques and their exquisite tile-ceramic, jeweled objects and painted surfaces found everywhere – see the first Istanbul photo album. I begin to find the plain and pleasing curved architectural lines – arches, domes, porticos – dizzying as I look up into the far-off circles of painted flowers and other shapes, inviting you to turn and turn and turn again, like the dervish dancers we experienced one evening, only in slow motion.
· I lay out on the hot marble circle of the 400-year-old Cemberlitas Hamami, feeling the heat move up through the wet towel around my waist and every naked limbs, looking up into the dark domed ceiling with its starry circles up sunlit air vents. The low guttural voices of male masseurs echo in the vast marble space, a language but sounding pre-verbal, animal. The soaping I receive turns my person into all body, not the subject of any tenderness but more like a slab of meat, exhilarating in its foreignness but not something of pleasure. But the overall effect of the steam and heat, the darkness, the deep male voices, the soapy massage, the circles of light – all this together leaves me soothed, physically pliable, feeling remarkably whole.
· I find myself seduced by the night time shapes and shadows of the monumental 1,400 year old Haghia Sofia, the vast Byzantine church of churches. Domes, arches, porticos, the squared and sloping lines of buttresses and out buildings, the towering minaret (the Ottomans turned Sophia into a mosque in the 15thC) … light and shadows everywhere. Sometimes appearing like the ‘church of holy wisdom it was built to, sometimes like a mid-19thC Manchester factory, sometimes like some futuristic or fantasy kingdom, today Sophia’ night lights emphasize its immensity, mystery, capacity to generate awe. Inside the effect is hardly different: the vast nave covered with its huge dome 180 feet above, the giant seraphims always about to float above off the pendentives below the dome. The throngs of Turkish and out of country visitors (every place teems with people during these several days) become miniatures inside Sofia’s immensity and dim interiors. The worn smooth buttery surfaces of the marble steps remind me of similarly worn rock surfaces on the cave floors of Kakadu – the weight and oils of human feet, years upon years upon years. The rolling marble floor upstairs: a reminder of the impossible weight of this building which, filled with the spirit of gravity, wants so much to sink into the earth. Later, outside in the fresh air and the night, I enjoy moving slowly around Sofia, watching her great solid Rubenesque immensities, curves and squares in shadows and light, move and change as I move, in some slow ease time and with an odd, surprising lightness.
· We take the crowded (yes, crowds again)public excursion boat up the Bophorous towards the Black Sea: Asia to the east, Europe to the west … an ancient and layered and still lingering divide, although crossed for so long and so profitably by traders in spices, perfumes and silk. So not far along we pass the still crumbling remains of the Fortress of Asia Castle that stand across the water from the crumbling Fortress of Europe Castle. Before that the grand Ottoman Baroque Dolmabahce Palace sprawls elegantly, if that is possible, along the water’s edge. And all along are the colourful, grand summer waterfront houses (yalis) of wealthy Instanbulis from recent centuries: many windowed and doored with white and cream trim, and maroon, ochre, red – many colours – walls. Beneath some of these mansions were once fishing villages and early yalis. Cultures like the Cossacks have seeped out of the Black Sea along here, influencing the architecture. Here we are awash in a northsoutheastwest crossroads, currents beneath currents beneath currents.
· The male voices of the Bilal (I believe) calling people to prayer from speakers atop the minarets. For us the everywhere public intrusive presence of this voice, booming across shampoo and cellphone billboards (and before sunrise into our dark bedroom). I begin to wonder about the fact and impact of this always male voice, so authoritatively present in every midst, sometimes gentler (as in the village of Safranbolu early this morning as I write), but in Istanbul feeling loudly hectoring, demanding. (On men and women: On the bus ride east today out of Istanbul, Betty remarks on how the women in the lunch break bus stop washroom appeared so different than they often do as we pass on the sidewalk: scarves off, long loose hair tumbling out, sociable banter and laughter.)
· Other memories, impressions … A drink with friends Betty, Roger (past Amnesty colleagues), Pat and their friend Betty on Serkeci Platform 19 at the terminus of the Orient Express, before watching the dervishes pray and whirl. The sidewalk man with a stand holding three small rabbits and small board with grooves containing many coloured slips of paper (passersby ‘ask’ a rabbit to choose a slip, your fortune), and the pleased young couple who must have heard what they wish for, but told us that the rabbits could even choose a fortune in English. Meeting Wendy on the road from Sydney and the pleasant conversations with her. How little we experienced of Istanbul in those first several days!
No comments:
Post a Comment