Postcards from Istanbul

view of Fatih from the Golden Horn Bridge

Istanbul is indescribable, truly, and you can’t help but love it. You should come with me the next time I visit, because I’ll definitely be back. It’s a huge city that I didn’t have nearly enough time in--only about two full days. I arrived on Monday evening after a very stressful border crossing at the land border between Turkey and Bulgaria. The Turkish border guards were suspicious of all of my diabetic supplies (also of my stuffed Pooh?) and my luggage was rifled through in a back room as I was questioned in Turkish for thirty minutes. But my faith in Turkey was soon restored in the border town of Edirne when an old woman bowed her head to me in passing and said salaam. I responded with the same. On Monday night a waiter at our group dinner--after hearing that my name was "Charlie" --insisted on calling me "Angel" the whole night (because of Charlie's Angels). He didn't mean it in a creepy way and I didn't feel uncomfortable; it actually reminded me of home because that's the name my parents call me, Angel. I even have a tattoo of an angel wing on my shoulder. So I figured Turkey was going to be all right.

On Tuesday, I spent the day with Matt, a twenty-nine-year-old Australian attorney who had adopted me as a little sister on the group tour I did of Bulgaria. On Wednesday, I took things a little slower, and on Thursday morning, I flew to Thessaloniki by way of Athens. I was supposed to take a bus from Istanbul to Thessaloniki, but that land border is dicey right now, plus I had such a hard time on the crossing from Bulgaria that my parents told me they’d pay for it if I flew instead.

Istanbul’s history is so long and complex that I’ve decided to skip my usual task of giving you a brief historical overview because no overview would be brief. The most important thing to remember is that Istanbul is on the Bosphorus, the strait between the Sea of Marmara (connected to the Mediterranean) and the Black Sea, and is the city that connects Europe and Asia. A lot going on there.

I thought the best way for me to explain what Istanbul is like is by showing you a series of vignettes, snapshots of moments from my time spent in this city of around twenty million. Postcards, if you will! Because, sure, sometimes a picture is worth a thousand words, but words also do a lot that pictures can't.

calligraphy inside the Hagia Sophia

Hagia Sophia

Tuesday, October 17, 8:55am

A line of tourists waits outside the Hagia Sophia for the mosque’s doors to open at 9am. The day is crisp and clear, although I’m sweating from the thirty-minute walk here from the other side of the Golden Horn. Everything makes me sweat. I drain the last bit of my coffee from its paper cup and go to toss the cup in what I’ve started to call “the bin.” I’ve spent the last week with an Australian and a Kiwi, and their lingo is starting to rub off on me. Bin. Mate. Reckon. Keen to.

Next to “the bin,” there’s a red and gold stand manned by a young woman in a black hijab, stacks of simit heating the glass. Simit are Turkish bagels, chewy dough twisted into rings, rolled in sesame seeds, and baked. You can buy one from one of the hundreds of stands around the city for twenty Turkish lira—about seventy cents. After Matt and I visited the Hagia Sophia and the Sultanahmet Mosque, I handed a fifty lira note to a grey-haired man and he handed me twenty-five back and a simit with cream cheese. Next to every simit stand, there’s usually a stand selling corn on the cob and roasted chestnuts.

Two large stray dogs are chasing each other, weaving in and out of the group of Chinese tourists in front of us. Their ears are tagged, indicating that they are fixed and vaccinated. A cat skulks by the trash cans, looking at the dogs distastefully, and I'm sure he’s thinking, you fools. Stray cats and dogs are all over Istanbul, and the dogs are usually large and potbellied, the older ones with watery red eyes. The cats look much healthier than the dogs (even though they usually aren’t vaccinated or fixed; they don’t let themselves get caught like the stupid dogs do), and can be found napping on doorsteps, loafing under bushes, and posing for tourists inside of the mosques.

a passageway in the Grand Bazaar

Grand Bazaar and Surrounding Area

Tuesday, October 17, 3pm

Matt and I are wading through one of the passages of the Grand Bazaar to get to Süleymaniye Mosque, Matt leading the way and me following closely behind him. Single file is easier in a crowd this dense, plus this way I can watch his backpack. We're paranoid because we both had read that the Grand Bazaar is pickpocketing central. I’d suggested to Matt that if either of us wanted to try our hand at thievery, this would be a good place to do it. Being good at lifting wallets seems like a useful skill to have--at least, that's what the movies would have you think. Matt did not take me up on it. He would not do well in a Turkish prison. But, to be fair, neither would I.

Hundreds of Turkish flags hang above the marble hallways and the shops selling jewelry and knockoff designer shoes, handbags, and perfume. A guy stops a motorcycle right in the middle of the passageway to hand one of the shopkeepers a pizza. Even after we exit the bazaar, personal space is a distant memory, and we pass stalls selling everything from fake Air Jordans to wedding dresses for babies (disturbing).

When we reach the peace and quiet of the mosque’s courtyard, both of us exhale a sigh of relief. Air! Space! No more body odor! I pull a sky-blue scarf out of my bag because women need to cover their heads when entering mosques. Matt says that he is glad to be a man, and that they deserve this one break after experiencing millennia of oppression as a gender. Then he looks at me, afraid he went too far, and it's my turn to roll my eyes.

At the Hagia Sophia, female security officers were distributing brightly patterned headscarves to the many women who didn’t bring one with them. But this mosque attracts far fewer tourists—it’s stunning, but it’s off the beaten trail—and so the few women who are here are the kind of people who had the forethought to bring their own head covering. I drape the scarf over my hair and wrap one end under my chin and over my shoulder. This morning, when I donned the scarf for the first time, it looked terrible. Like my head was shrink-wrapped in blue silk. Since then, I’ve figured out how to fold it and drape it so it looks a little better. Matt and I take off our shoes before we step onto the carpet in the mosque’s doorway—we’re pros at this now—and plunk the shoes in the cubbies that line the entryway.

one of the Süleymaniye Mosque's minarets

The Golden Horn Bridge

Tuesday, October 17, 4:15pm

The call to prayer begins, sounding from the minarets of each of Istanbul’s 3,500 mosques. ʾAllāhu ʾakbar. ʾAšhadu ʾan lā ʾilāha ʾillā -llāh. ʾAšhadu ʾanna Muḥammad al rasūlu -llāh. God is the greatest. There is no god but God, and Muhammad is the messenger of God. The loudest singing comes from the giant speakers atop the Hagia Sophia and the Sultanahmet Mosque, but the Arabic words echo from every corner of the city. Matt and I are crossing the Golden Horn, a bay on the European side of Istanbul, via a pedestrian bridge, and we stop to listen. Plus, Matt wants to take a picture. On our left, the Fatih neighborhood, the old town of Constantinople, is spiky with minarets. On our right, Galata Tower rises above a pile of orange and tan buildings—Istanbul’s newer neighborhoods on the European side. Across the Bosporus, the Asian side of the city rises from the waves. The sun turns the water to gold, seagulls dance in front of the minarets, and wind tugs my hair out of its bun. Behind us, there is a bustling stream of pedestrians: women in black hijabs, men in suits, girls in denim jackets with earbuds, boys in Nike sneakers, babies in strollers, kids on scooters. This is why you travel, Matt says. He’s right.

walking uphill in Fatih

Karaköy Neighborhood

Tuesday, October 17, 5pm

I picked the wrong way to walk to the restaurant from my hotel. I am walking straight uphill (to be fair, this would be the case on any route I chose to walk) up a dim, narrow street filled mostly with men. Some are sitting and drinking tulip-shaped glasses of red tea, some smoke while leaning against a doorframe, and some are loading or unloading boxes into trucks that are blocking traffic. There’s a steady stream of honking. This appears to be the place you come in Istanbul if you want to buy power tools or stuff to fix your toilet.

I feel uneasy, but not scared. Although they’re scarce, there are other women on the street, and most men either ignore me completely or give me a curious glance and then resume their activities. One guy—who’s fairly young and attractive—starts smiling and singing at me when I pass him. He tries to follow me, but a nasty look stops him in his tracks.

I make it to the restaurant I’d found on Google, a hole-in-the-wall kind of place that serves from a buffet of casserole dishes, and I get some eggplant, chickpeas, cabbage, and okra to go for only 120 lira (about five and a half dollars). I take a different way back to my hotel.

the interior of the Sultanahmet Mosque (also called the Blue Mosque)

Gülhane Park

Wednesday, October 18, 11:45am

I’m on my own today. Matt got up early to explore the city again at breakneck speed, but I slept in and am finishing my coffee in the park before I join the giant line of people waiting to enter Topkapi Palace. I'd made my way across the Golden Horn to Fatih by myself, darting in between cars, feeling wind from the motorcycles that speed by just inches away from you, weaving around people on the sidewalk. I passed the men fishing off of the Golden Horn Bridge, buckets next to them filled with wriggling silver fish.

Now I’m in the park, one of the few green spaces in Istanbul. It’s calm, and it feels so nice to have a good ten feet of empty space around me. Two women perch on the bench next to me for a few minutes to chat. A cat lounges in the grass.

the moody sky and water as seen from the ferry

Bosporus Strait

Wednesday, October 18, 5:30pm

The ferry from Üsküdar, on the Asian side of Istanbul, to Karaköy is nearly empty, and the sun has started to set over the city. I’m sitting upstairs on a wooden bench painted white, and when I cross my legs I notice how dirty my black boots have become. Hint: they are no longer black.

Even though this trip from Asia to Europe is only about fifteen minutes, there’s a guy walking around with a tray of tea and fresh fruit for sale. Fresh fruit is everywhere in Istanbul—cubed watermelon and grapes sold in cups; halved oranges arranged artfully on stands that sell pomegranate juice they press right in front of you.

I’m having another one of those moments, those I-can’t-believe-this-is-my-life moments. I’m crossing a strait that has been a huge part of world history for thousands of years. The sky is cloudy, so the sunset isn’t so much beautiful as it is moody. I tried to take a picture of the skyline, but the pictures don’t do it justice. That’s the case with all of Istanbul—the pictures just don’t capture what it’s really like. Hence why I’ve turned to words.

I can tell when we’re close to Karaköy and I head down the boat’s stairs to be ready to get off. The waves are choppy because of the wind and rain, but my sea legs seem to be pretty good today for a girl who grew up in the middle of Texas. Or I’m just so determined to look like I know what I’m doing that I will myself into staying poised and upright. 90% of blending in is attitude. The other 10% is not wearing dumb clothes.

When we bump into the dock, I hop over the dirty tire that’s there as a steppingstone and walk with the other ferry-goers towards Galata. There’s a man with no legs playing a violin near the dock, and I pass him at first, but then I pause and step out of the pedestrian traffic. If there’s any street musician I should support, it’s this guy, an amputee violinist who sounds good but not great. You could describe me using the exact same words. I plink ten lira (which really isn’t very much, it’s enough to buy him a bottle of water) in the man’s violin case. He thanks me in Turkish: teşekkür ederim, which you say like teh-sugar-eh-DEH-reem.

bad picture, but look at the destinations

Istanbul Airport

Thursday, October 19, 8:30am

It’s time to leave Istanbul. Protests a few nights ago in front of the Israeli consulate turned violent, and last night I heard shouting and fireworks from my hotel. The U.S. consulate in Adana closed, and diplomatic staff have been advised to limit movement. When Matt and I ate dinner last night—at the same restaurant I visited on Tuesday—we passed small groups of police in riot gear waiting on the street.

I’m sitting in an airport café with some coffee. The departures board looks like my travel wish list, and if it weren’t for my American citizenship, I could get on a flight this morning to Moscow, Tehran, Jeddah, or Ashgabat. The couple at the table next to me is speaking in Farsi, but I catch only the occasional word. Clock, day, America. You can hear every language in Istanbul, and I don’t recognize most of them. I know I heard Spanish, Russian, Arabic, German, and Farsi. Beyond that, it was a blur of syllables.

My flight leaves in an hour and a half. I woke up this morning at 6:15 with the first call to prayer. But I know I’ll be back to hear it again.