Istanbul is itself

Tonight is the last night of my Grand Tour, and I am spending it in Istanbul. Having left my touring companion in Athens and meeting up with another friend at the vast and relatively newly built Havalimani Istanbul Airport, I have been here a week. I first visited almost ten years ago staying with two of my cousins in an apartment in Kadirga, a suburb within walking distance of the area which draws so many of Istanbul`s huge tourist market, Sultanahmet. I am staying in the same apartment with the same very obliging owner living down stairs and I am delighted at how familiar the area feels. There has been some gentrification with more homes now operating as small hotels and there have been conversions of houses to restaurants, but the essential simplicity of the area has remained. I love how familiar it feels.

The Haigh Sophia, Blue Mosque, Topkapi palace, the Basilica cistern, and the Hippodrome are contained within a relatively small area and were it not for the sheer volume of people visiting this small area, it would be easy to see these icons of Istanbul, within a relatively short period. This is not the case. If you have not prebooked, the lines, everywhere are long. This visit, I have not visited either the Haigh Sophia or The Blue Mosque, defeated by the hills, hoards and humidity but my friend does and relays back that whilst the blue tiles of the interior of the Blue Mosque which give it its name remain, the floor is carpeted in red. My memory of my visit was that the floor was then blue. I may of course, be wrong.  What remains constant is the sheer antiquity of the building, its extraordinary mosaic work and the wonderful simple chandeliers which light the space.  This image, not mine, show the six turrets of the structure and its dominance in the landscape. One of the turrets is currently scaffolded like many other structures in the city. Türkiye is not immune to the big infrastructure build occurring across the world. There is a lot of money being spent all over the city. I idly wonder if it is Russians roubles.  

 Nearby the Haigh Sophia also dominates. My friend is, as I am, impressed by the history contained in this monumental building. Built in the 500`s by the Roman Emperor Justinian, the structure has served many faiths. Since my original visit the building, then a museum has returned, not without controversy, to being a mosque. “Orhan Pamuk, Turkish novelist and Nobel laureate, publicly denounced the move, saying "Kemal Atatürk changed... Hagia Sophia from a mosque to a museum, honouring all previous Greek Orthodox and Latin Catholic history, making it as a sign of Turkish modern secularism". (Wikipedia) His intimation being that with the change of the museum back to a mosque, that secularism is under threat. Certainly, in the ten years since I last visited, if the clothing of women is any guide, Türkiye has become a more visibly Islamic city.

 Orhan Pamuk is one of the reasons I have returned to Istanbul. In 2008 he published a novel set in the city, called the Museum of Innocence. I have tried to read it several times however have never finished the book which has as its “main themes the fight against the social norms of the Turkish society of the seventies, and the value of memories preserved and handed down by the objects belonging to the loved one “(Hypercritic). I wish these themes had been evident in my reading of the book which I found unforgivably turgid. In 2009 Pamuk built an actual Museum of Innocence which I visited when I first came to the city. It is a gorgeous, intricate folly and I adored it then. A revisiting only serves to reinforce how much I still adore it. As a woman who collects ephemera and memorabilia, these intricate cabinets are a delightful inspiration. I get his point about the value of memories and begin making plans for the constructions of cabinets in which to curate my own curiosities.

Obviously, I do not universally adore all Orhan Pamuk`s writings but the novel, A Strangeness in My Mind, described as Pamuk`s love letter to Istanbul is a favourite and reading it before I came back only sharpened my desire to do so. For me it is about the sprawl of this city of 15 million, the low rise of the buildings, the enormous seagulls that glint in flocks across the huge sky, and the turrets of the many mosques from which issue, to form a discordant cacophony, the numerous daily calls to prayer. These are shown to some advantage from the rooftop of my apartment or on the top deck of the hop on hop off bus.

 After the early morning and into the late evening, the humidity of Istanbul can be daunting. It is a city where sitting happens, most visibly men in cafes, and in the evening, women and children gather to sit in the park surrounding the local fountain. The Basilica cistern is an ancient subterranean water collector, the largest of many in Istanbul. I mention it in the same context as the humidity because, now longer serving its original function, it is a wonderful escape from the above ground heat, once the waiting in line has been accomplished. It is also an astonishingly beautiful space which has been sensitively populated with wonderful sculpture since I was last here.  

Top Kapi Palace, is also a wonderful space. From the 1460s until 1856, it served as the administrative centre of the Ottoman Empire and was the main residence of its sultans. It was also initially the main recipient of water from the Basilica cistern. My interest in Top Kapi has come from a strong curiosity about the functioning of a Harem, and the role of the Sultan`s mother in his life and his choices. Throughout the Grand tour I have been introduced to several women who have played significant roles in the power struggles of their countries but have been little heralded. The sultan`s mother it seems, is another unheralded power player, holding sway over the harem and her son`s choices from it. The harem rooms are, like much of the palace, lavishly tiled. These tiles, and the intricate mosaics of the mosques and many other public buildings are an integral part of the Istanbul visual. Islamic art is nonrepresentational however it loses little given the extraordinary embellishment which is evident in its most important buildings.    

The city is not however generally lavish and the stone simplicity of many of its building is evident in the community centre used for religious education visited to witness a Sufi ceremony featuring Whirling Dervishes of Rumi fame. This centre was built in 1582 and on its central wooden floor we watch three men enact a ritual ceremony celebrating their faith. They are accompanied by three musicians who are also integral to the ceremony and the whirling of their floor length white tunics, weighted at the hem, acts as a fan, sending cooling air into the humidity of the evening. It is a ceremony I have seen before and both times I have been entranced and humbled by the strength of observation the participants and their accompaniment demonstrate.  

I am loathe to leave Istanbul, not just because it signals the end of my Grand Tour but also because I am not sure that I will have the time to ever return. My proposed travelling life does not easily bring me back to this city bridging Europe and Asia and honestly there are few of the tourist sights I wish to revisit. I just like hanging out here. Its fascinating and complex, dull and very simple. I will miss it.