I nodded off somewhere over Lithuania, missing Ukraine entirely, coming to somewhere over coastal Romania and the brilliant blue expanse of the Black Sea unfolded once again on the left side of the aircraft. It followed the coast of Bulgaria for a long descent into Istanbul. I really wanted to see Istanbul for the first time from the sea much as travelers had for ages in the past – its minarets and towers ever growing on hills in the horizon. But final approach directly over the old city was certainly the next best thing, seeing the great Blue Mosque and the Aya Sofia and the impossible narrow streets and alleyways unfolding below in a dusk brown and green medley.
Arriving was no hassle whatsoever. Masked immigration officials manned monitors that read passenger body heat searching out the piggy flu. But the metro bore me into town, where after a slight half-hour of being lost in the poor direction of a construction detour and losing forty gallons of sweat amongst the oven-like hustle and bustle of suburban Istanbul, I finally found the tram and got to Sultanamet, the tourist heartland of the city.
Spending three days and two nights in Istanbul, I walked the lengths of alleys and steep hills amongst the spires and the enchanting call to prayer. As expected, Justinian’s Aya Sofia and the sultan’s Blue Mosque both blew me away. The dome indeed must be the most perfect of all architectural innovations ever happened upon. Seeing the sun set over the city, framed with forlorn seagulls and jets barreling in overhead, I would not at all describe the scene as peaceful as motion and movement seem to be Istanbul’s calling cards. Yet it is more like seeing the sun set over a jungle, a peace and calm settling the city and cooling the nerves in a way that assures that nightlife will consist of tea and quiet conversation, having exhausted all recourse to frenetic indulgence. In the evenings, I sat on the rooftop patio of my hostel, which overlooked the busy Bosphorus, and chatted with a few Aussies, Americans and Turks for not long into the night.
I spent nearly four hours at the Topkapi Palace, once the seat of the most powerful man in the world, the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire. There were several attractions to capture my time: the gardens, the treasury (which boasted a diamond the size of a tennis ball, found in a dump and sold to a spoonmaker for three spoons), the portraits, the rod of Moses (really?), the jewel-encrusted arm and skull of St. John the Baptist (he would have loved that!). But what really stoked the fires of imagination was walking through the Sultan’s harem.
The harem: before the reader envisions scantily clad belly-dancers throwing themselves at the whims of a silk-robed, turban-donned sovereign, one should keep in mind that first of all, belly dancing is Egyptian, and second of all, “the harem” is simply where the sultan’s private quarters are located. After all, his mom shared the place with him, and since she was the second most powerful figure in the affairs of state and approved of all of his women for him, and this situation to me can’t be less indicative to what I always imagined what I thought was some sort of sexy aristocratic free love of the 16th century. There were painstakingly elaborate rituals behind being adopted into the Sutlan’s court, and it was anything but what we think of today as a “harem.”
Even in their current state of age and disrepair, the rooms were beyond description. The light filtered in from above to fill the rooms with a majestic light of deity. The Sultan’s “oval office” which isn’t a very good metaphor as it was reserved for family only (affairs of state took place in another part of the palace) was a domed wonder – a patchwork quilt of differing tiles, styles and designs ranging from Ottoman to Rococo to Baroque. I lingered in this room the longest, imagining what it must have been like to sit on the seat of the preeminent world power of the time.
I took the ferry across the Bosphorus to Asia and back again – marveling in what must be the busiest waterway on God’s earth; behemoth container ships, giant cruise liners, speeding ferries and lingering yachts move around each other in perfect synchrony, like a ballet of elephants on ice skates.
If I wouldn’t have ever been to India, I would have found the constant restaurateur touts annoying. But I had, and chortled at their impotency. Still, I relented to some of them in order to stuff myself with spicy meat-filled wraps, salad, fresh bread and Turkish-style pizza (called “pida”).
Comparing the ritual of hot water purification in different areas of the world is somewhat of a fetish of mine. Being somewhat averse to the violence and harshness of Russian/Ukrainian style “banya” (super hot sauna followed by hitting with birch branches superseded by jumping in snow or freezing cold water, anyone? Anyone? Anyone?), I was eager to try out a Turkish bath (“hammam”). Donning only a towel a burly Turkish guy roughly massages you with soap on a hot stone, while the German tourist next to you groans something about his bad back. Anyone? Anyone? In my opinion, no nation has anything on rejuvenation, zen and calm of the Japanese bath “the onsen”. In close second place is an American chest-deep in his homeland: in a hot spring in a snowstorm winter somewhere in the Rocky Mountains. Next item to evaluate will be the German sauna.
-Sorry for the sorry state of photos - these pics are unedited - dowloaded from the road
