Iain Morris wanders through the streets of Istanbu
On the Edge of Europe
Istanbul, Turkey
On a bumpy one-hour flight from Athens to Istanbul, I overcame my
fear of flying – temporarily, at least. Exhaustion can be a wonderful
salve for anxiety. When I finally boarded the plane, I was so
drunk with sleep deprivation that I could have cared less if we had
plummetted into the Bosphorus on attempting to land. As the plane
sped down the runway, its tail end slaloming erratically, I dozed
off, waking only when we hit heavy turbulence over the Sea of
Marmara, by which time we were close to our destination.
Istanbul must rank as one of my better airport experiences. I had
expected to find officials dawdling over my visa application, an
interminable wait for my backpack at baggage collection and – worst
of all – a melee of hustlers and touts on emerging into the arrivals
lounge. None of these materialised, and before I could say
Sultanahmet, I was cruising towards Istanbul’s old town in a very
comfortable airport shuttle bus.
The outskirts of Istanbul were an incongruous blend of the old and
the new. Box-shaped homes of crumbling concrete lined one side of
the highway, but poking through this ugly façade the odd minaret or
church spire promised that some architectural gems were buried
beneath the rubbish dump of construction. To my right, the Sea of
Marmara was slate black in the weak daylight. Weather is not a plus
point in Istanbul at this time of year. The sky looked like a
waterlogged ashtray, the dark clouds great sodden lumps of burnt
tobacco that drizzled on to the streets intermittently.
I disembarked at Aksaray and walked the half mile from there to my
hostel in Sultanahmet. The broad, car-clogged streets thinned like
the tributaries of a river, trickling into the complex of mosques,
museums and market stalls that gazed across the Bosphorus at Asia.
Shoeshine boys jogged alongside me, pointing to my boots and waving
mud-caked toothbrushes under my nose. Frail city elders with long
white beards and Islamic skullcaps stroked worry beads with
trembling fingers, their brows furrowed in concentration as if they
were puzzling some philosophical quandary. Young Turkish men garbed
in the latest designer jackets flashed curious looks in my direction
as they marched briskly past. One approached me to ask where I was
going.
“I’m looking for the Paris Hostel,” I replied.
“The Paris Hostel? I think you have gone too far, my friend. Come, I will show you the way.”
I followed him down a cobbled side street, past a jewellery store
and kebab vendor, the familiar elephant’s leg of meat turning behind
the window.
“Where are you from, my friend?”
“England – London.”
“Ah, England. Now in Turkey we have few English. Since the bomb, people
don’t come here. But you are welcome. My name is Ido. What is
yours?”
I introduced myself as we climbed the steps outside the entrance to
my hostel. Ido bade me farewell and presented me with a business
card. “If you want to buy carpet, my shop is very close.”
The hotel manager had misplaced the details of my reservation, but
there were plenty of vacant rooms regardless. I was offered a glass
of apple tea while one was cleaned, and soon found myself chatting
to the hotel staff about Tugay Kerimoglu, the Blackburn Rovers
midfielder.
“Not so good now, I think,” smiled the manager’s brother, a pint-sized teenager with a mop of greasy black hair that flopped over the
corners of his mouth. “Maybe your team not so good because of Tugay.”
I couldn’t have agreed with him more.
“But Graham Sounness is a good manager, no?” interjected the hostel manager. “He manage Galatasaray in Turkey before. Very good. But not
for me. I hate Galatasaray. I support Fenerbahce.”
I asked him whether it was easy to buy tickets for the weekend matches. “Not so easy, but I will ask for you.”
I was shown to my room and left in peace outside the door. Inside, I
quickly surveyed my sleeping quarters for the next few days – flesh-coloured walls, a large, square window overlooking a deserted
backalley and a clean bathroom that offered only lukewarm water. The
bed beckoned invitingly and I gratefully wrapped myself in its warm
blankets and drifted into a deep sleep.
At sunset, the minarets of the Blue Mosque jabbed the flame-red sky
like black pokers stoking a furnace. I had absentmindedly wandered a
few hundred yards east of the Paris Hostel after being roused from
my slumber by the muezzin’s call to prayer. Sauntering into the
ancient Hippodrome, I was rewarded with a sight to behold. Perhaps
sunsets in Istanbul are always this glorious, but earlier the sky
had been so overcast that I would have sworn this couldn’t happen.
Some of the dark clouds were still visible over the horizon, their
tattered edges glowing orange like oil-soaked rags set ablaze. But
it was the foreground that captivated me: to my right, the Sultan
Ahmet Camii – the Blue Mosque as it is more commonly known to
tourists – with its six pencil-shaped minarets and cascading domes;
to my left, the 1500-year-old Aya Sofya – the most important church
in Christendom for a thousand years until the construction of St
Peter’s in Rome, by which stage it had been reincarnated as an
Ottoman mosque.
There was still time to pay a visit to Aya Sofya – both less
flamboyant and more imposing than its neighbour. Four towering
minarets formed the bare skeleton of a cage around its perimeter,
identical to those seen outside other mosques in Turkey, but – of
course – a much later addition to this structure. The central
edifice was a salmon-pink block bulging with rounded outbuildings
and capped with a dome of monstrous proportions. A miracle of
engineering, it seemed to hang in space like an elaborate lampshade,
unsupported by columns or balustrades. The Ottomans had attempted to
replicate this effect in other mosques, but had ultimately failed,
the architects responsible paying for their professional
shortcomings with their lives.
Inside, the bizarre amalgamation of Byzantine and Ottoman design was
in evidence everywhere I looked. When Sultan Mehmet II – the
Conqueror, or Fatih, as he became known to later generations –
breached the walls of Constantinople in 1453, he rode straight to
Aya Sofya to pay his respects to Allah. There, he found one of his
soldiers hacking away at the polished stone floor with an axe.
Mehmet asked the soldier why he was desecrating the church. “For
Allah,” responded the young man, upon which the Sultan struck him
with a sword, saying: “For you, the women and treasures of the city;
for me, the buildings.” In converting the Orthodox Christian church
into a mosque, Mehmet then took care to preserve much of the
original Byzantine artistry, but the more ‘idolatrous’ mosaics
portraying Christ on the throne were plastered over. Perversely,
this decision may have prevented the mosaics from having faded and
lost their glory when Ataturk – the father of the modern Turkish
state – ordered the conversion of the mosque into a museum and
restoration work began.
On exiting Aya Sofya, I was approached by one of the many carpet
sellers who linger in Sultanahmet, preying on unwary tourists. He
was a cripple, and dragged one useless leg behind him in short
bursts, as though hauling a heavy sack uphill, his hands thrust deep
into the pockets of a long black trenchcoat. He introduced himself as
Turhan and asked if I would join him for tea. I knew this game from
my travels in Egypt but acquiesced, since the night was upon us and
there was little else to do at this time other than find somewhere to
eat and drink.
Turhan soon realised that I wasn’t interested in buying a carpet,
and we chatted amicably about tourism in Istanbul, surrounded by
beautiful, hand-woven fabrics.
“For 14 years I have worked in this store,” mused Turhan, stroking
his moustache affectionately, as though it were a small pet. “Never
have things been so bad. Why your prime minister tell people not to
come here? Bomb can happen anywhere, yes? In London, maybe?”
I tried to explain that many people in England would probably agree
with him, but he was off.
“Terrorism bad, I think. Bad for everyone. Bad for Turkish people
and for English people. And bad for business.” He emphasised the
last, implying that the slump in carpet sales was the overriding
concern, and that Messrs Bush and Blair should take note.
I told Turhan that I wasn’t dissuaded from travelling by terrorism.
In fact, I was planning to visit Syria and Lebanon after Turkey.
“Syria!” he exclaimed, his voice rising an octave. “Syria is very
bad, now. Very dangerous.”
“Oh, really? Which parts, exactly?”
“Mmm … all of it. Be very careful in Syria. Better not to go
there, I think. Stay here, in Turkey.”
I finished my apple tea and said my goodbyes to Turhan, who insisted
I return if I changed my mind about buying a carpet. Strolling back
to my hostel along the Divan Yolu, I felt charmed by Istanbul – and
a little queasy about what lay further south.