Beside the Seaside

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In Which Raindrops Are Falling On My Head

November 1, 2008 by Mike

Istanbul

Several days in Istanbul. Thousands of thoughts, sensations, images, faces, distractions, smells, smiles, perspectives, glances, windows, paces, flags, reflections, sounds.

Thousands of years of history.

Millions -- no, make that gazillions -- of raindrops. Heavy, hot, thick, insistent raindrops, all in the space of a single two day period.

Having stayed in a 4-star hotel last week thanks to Erkut, I managed to find a hotel this time where I count count at least four stars through the holes in the ceiling. No curtain. One sheet -- not clean. No light in the bathroom.. but then, no water in the shower or sink and no way I'd step in there fully clothed, let alone naked. I upgraded swiftly to a damp, dank, flea pit and told myself it's all part of the experience.

The rain! Caught out on Sunday -- I had to buy a new pair of shoes because mine were completely done for after a walk from Sultanahmet to the hotel. Noticeably, the only other people on the streets were tourists. The locals -- Istanbullus -- may talk a good talk ("I've never seen rain like it!") but don't walk the walk. They were inside, laughing at us.. and quite rightly so. This rain was Biblical -- irony intended.

In awe of Aghia Sofia, not becase it's one of the great buildings of the world, or because it was the centre of the Greek Orthodox Church, or later of Ottoman Islam, but because it's where James Bond goes when he's in Istanbul in From Roosia With Love.

But to be honest, loving the Blue Mosque a little bit more.

Getting my new trousers taken up in a little tailoring hot-house down a flight of rickity stairs in the middle of the garment district north of the Spice Bazaar: hiding round the corner where one of the workers was trying to eat his lunch while someone else stiched up the trousers; half the staff were Galatasaray fans, half were Fenerbahçe.. oh, the laughs we had. Cost of work: about 40p.

The shapes of the city are different from any other I have seen in Europe:

Being told off for reading Pamuk's Istanbul because his experience of the city was "fundamentally bourgeois", by a woman in a bar who claimed to speak "only very bad English." Talking to her for the next hour in fluent English about the national secular/ Islamist divide; Turkey's role in Europe and Asia; the price of fish.

Still being in the bar four hours later, with a bloke from Wales and an American who looked quite surprised when it was pointed out to me.. and him.. that he's married to a Turkish woman.

Republic Day - the 85th birthday of modern Turkey, and here's me wandering up and down Istiklar -- Independence Avenue -- from Taksim to the Galata Bridge, counting the flags, counting the portraits of Atatürk, countless smiles, oh and more than one or two uniforms.

This nationalism seems benign to me, a quiet pride more akin to Norway -- where people fly the flag because they really think Norwegian-ness is pretty good, thank you very much -- than the gun-totin', holier-than-thou jingoism of other nearly-new countries. U.S. of A, I'm pointing at you, here. I know that's an immediate contradiction with that soldier, or others standing very conspicuously on nearby rooftops. It doesn't agree with the sentiments of some of my Turkish friends, who hardly know where to look with embarrassment when all the flags are unfurled. And as for my *Greek* friends, for whom Turkey is at once a godless monster and an Islamic beast, the less said the better.

Crossing the bridge to Asia, which is quite a sight in itself, not to mention quite a concept. But it doesn't 'alf concentrate the mind when you see the sign
"ASYA KITASINA
HOS GELDINIZ
WELCOME TO ASIA"
having spent two-and-a-half years asking hundreds of people "Is Turkey in Asia? Not just the bit in Europe, but the whole of Asia minor, across the Bosphorus?" I know now that besidetheseaside stops in Roosia, not all the way round Turkey at the Syrian border.

Molly's Cafe: as expat as it sounds, but in a good way. More questions about how Turkey is; more answers.. not necessarily the right ones, but all food for thought. And talking of food, Molly's cookies are divine.

And talking of divine food: Istanbul. The food. Wow.

Seeing the same wooden house on the road below Aghia Sofia every day but never remembering to take its photograph. The top floor has started to capsize -- half the roof gone, a window frame poking through like broken bones sticking out of a shattered limb.

The shops and bars of Galata Bridge. And the never-ending line of anglers hanging off the side. How bridges should be.

A night of red wine, good food and better company with the Varadero International honchos -- and the beautiful woman I couldn't stop looking at, who couldn't stop looking at me.

You want a definition of poverty; of low-level entrepreneurship? How about, a man selling hand-rolled cigarettes, one by one, to commuters at a busy underground passage. How much can he expect to make on each one? How many people are going to stop to buy one?

A few steps away, on a schoolday, a boy of no more than ten selling umbrellas.

Derelicts and drunks, capsized, asleep in stairwells and shop doorways and in parks, in the shrubbery and behind trees.

Cemetaries just outside the city walls.. just as they are described in history books of all the great walled cities down the ages.. Muslim and Jewish and Orthodox.. including very recent burials from Istanbul's tiny Greek population.

The Grand Bazaar -- there are at least three prices for fake Converse Allstars. For locals, for tourists who like a bargain, and for the fat Americans off the cruise ships wearing fezzes and asking if they can pay in Euros or dollars.

Listening to a young Turkish band murderous version of Guns'n'Roses' murderous version of Knockin' On Heaven's Door, and wondering how the singer manages to make "knock, knock knocking" sound like three completely different words:

"nog, nack, mugganh own heeble's dohb"

but after those same two-and-a-half years, and all the singers in all the bars I've suffered through, not being surprised any more when the enthusiastic crowd joins in and gets the same mistakes

Ducking into the Cagaloglu Hamam to escape the rain. A turkish bath in Turkey. Lovely. Historic, grand, old, sweaty. But you've never seen a place that makes so much mileage out of a small quote in an English newspaper. This article, all 32 words of it, are reproduced endlessly in and around the Hamam. Mind you, it's true.

Caddesbostan Sahilyolu: a beautiful day, a little adventure, sunshine, the smell of the horses, smiles, dreams, feeling good and strong. Special.

A thin apartment building, at six floors tall it stands out from its battered neighbours tall, but not proud, no wider than a snooker table, windows so dirty they seemed to have been painted with mud, the top floor a line of blackened windows and rusted iron-faced walls, with a view of the Galeta bridge, its shops amd fishing rods, the minarets of the halfg-a-dozen mosques, the chugchug and puttputt of a hundred ferries and fishing boats.

Appearing on the radio.

I love being shaved. It's the best thing about being a man (that I can discuss here.) I love the smells of a traditional barber's shop. I love the stately choreography of the shave itslelf. Being my father's son, I also enjoy sitting down facing a large mirror! I always end up going to the oldest barber in town, for that authentic, old-style shave and it's only when I'm in the chair with the red leather seat and the worn brass handrails, hot towels over my face and the cut-throat razor shaking close to my right ear, that it occurs to me that the oldest barber in town is usually the one with the unsteadiest hand.

Fenerbahçe's Sükrü Saracoğlu Stadyumu. It's in Asia. It's hosting the UEFA Cup Final this season. What chance Galatasaray make the final, just to spite their biggest rivals?

Turkish, like all languages, is a cuckoo. French has contributed a wide and rich vocabulary: get your hair cut at a kuaför, ride home on your bisiklet or stop for a sosis sandviç if you're hungry.

Dead rats floating on the Golden Horn. Which, in the rain, didn't look terribly golden.

Being called "Mister Mike! Mister Mike!" by the gleeful custodian of the car park Erkut had found me for the bike.

Dancing in the street: my last night, in a small side street off Istaklar. It was like a scene out of Fame. Everyone -- except yr correspondent -- knows all the words and all the moves. The campest couple I've seen in a public place EVAH.

And a million-and-one other things. Love it.

But I can't go without saying a HUUUUGE Tay-shay-kurrr-der'em -- that's how I spell it, anyway -- to Erkut. We met for five mintes in italy half a year ago, but he has been incredibly kind and generous to me. He's a good man and a good friend.

Beside the Seaside

In Which Raindrops Are Falling On My Head

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