Notes on Istanbul

I don’t want to order my memories—let me just write them out as they are, where they are. It’s more accurate and true, and it’s easier on them.

Our guide was named Tekin, rugged but also very kind and worldly. His eyes were a pale green. There wasn’t a single question he couldn’t answer. Ahead of us but always with his head turned back to our group (my mother, my aunt, our friend Elenita, and me). He showed us the Topkapı Palace—massive grounds, an infinity of tiles and jewels, the Spoonmaker Diamond, the kitchen, the baths, the harem, etc. Tiles from Iznik, formerly Nicaea. View of the Bosphorous.

Then the Basilica Cisterns—formerly filled completely with water, held up mainly by defective columns (acceptable—submerged, they would not have been seen). Massive, massive, massive. Rows and rows of columns. Two of the columns had discarded heads of Medusa as their bases. Others had partial inscriptions. The most popular column was etched with a peacock-like network of swirls and eyes.

Then finally the Hagia Sophia, bigger than you could have ever imagined from the outside—on the interior, gold ceilings, Arabic inscriptions written into enormous black disks fastened around the walls, Christian iconography covered (minus the winged seraphim “upholding” the dome and the image of Jesus just outside the entrance) because of the conversion to mosque three years ago. Triumphant scale, vast minarets of brick and stone. Mind-boggling wealth has come to this city.

Istanbul is a busy metropolis. In this historical districts like Fatih and Galata, tourists are in every street and alley, and the bazaars are abuzz with shop owners everywhere yelling for you to come into their shops. If you so much as make eye contact with one of them as they’re standing outside the entrance to their store, they will call to you and entice you and pursue you and besiege you with an aggression I’ve never experienced before. They aren’t mean, of course, but you could still call it an aggressive persistence. One woman shop owner was calling out, “Ma’am, come here. Madame, come here.” That sort of terse, demanding language. (Incidentally, not too many woman shop owners at all.) There was even one waiter who actually followed us away from his café for some distance trying to get our attention (my mother’s in particular), holding out a menu towards us, and I didn’t think we’d ever shake him off.  If they aren’t directly entreating you to enter their establishments, shop and café owners also try striking up a conversation with you with the hopes of pulling you in from there. “Hey, brother, where are you from?” For a while I would respond to these various merchants and café owners with quiet but steadfast negation and deflection: “No,” “No, thank you,” “Maybe later,” etc. But they seemed to take these statements as further invitation to pursue. The best strategy for me, then, ended up being to completely ignore them. All they want is for you to eat their food and buy their products, of course, but if you were to give in to every last entreaty, you’d pretty soon have no money left. It was the sort of insistent beleaguering that I found jarring but also altogether unique and, in retrospect, kind of fun.

The shops themselves were very nice. The pastry shop windows had perfect grids of baklava and lovely pyramids of Turkish delight. At one olive shop, vast buckets of olives of all colors, even strange colors ones like yellow and blue. I think I remember that in one basket there were olives with some sort of design drawn on them. But that could be a trick of my mind.

The Grand Bazaar, where we went the day before our tour with Tekin, was a labyrinthine network of lofty halls with throngs of people and no clearly marked exits. It’s an incredible place, to be experienced at least once. A stressful place. I felt squeezed by the shop owners on one side and the thick molasses of tourists and buyers on the other. Still, I did look around at what the shops had—their windows were filled floor to ceiling with products, which spilled out of their doorways into the halls. Some stores were full of jewelry—some only gold, which glittered like the ceiling of the Hagia Sophia, though the gold probably wasn’t all that real. Other stores were full of Turkish lamps, others with pastries and Turkish delights and candies, others with bobbleheads and children’s toys, others with purses, others with nothing but wedding dresses. One stand sold very pretty boardgames like for backgammon and chess, which had the same wood and mother-of-pearl geometric designs as the window shutters of the mosques and the palace.

The Grand Bazaar was much bigger, however, than what I was expecting. It was hard to get a sense of just how big. Turn left and you encountered yet another interminable path of shops and people. Turn right and it was the same. And with the way the paths curved and bent so subtly, you easily got lost. After getting my fix of bazaars and shopwindows, I told the others I would leave, and I waited (in fresh and freely mobile air) by the column of Constantine. (It was by sheer luck that I found the same entrance we’d come in through.) I was relieved. The Grand Bazaar was worth trying once, but that was enough.

The Spice Bazaar was much simpler, and more elegant, than the Grand one. A single covered hall supported by periodic arches striped in black and white. Here we saw spices in quantities I’d never imagined. Cumin, paprika, pepper, sumac, and then unusual spices that I can’t even recall. All sorts of colors, too. Not only spices but also teas, with odd ones including “Anti-Aging Tea,” “Love Tea,” and “Viagra Tea.” Some of the shops sold dried sponges—long, soft, porous columns hanging from the tops of the stands. I have never been intimidated by a sponge, but in that case, I couldn’t help feeling just a bit unsettled by the sight of them, if only because of their size. They seemed almost like they would sting if I touched them (I know sponges don’t sting). There were also long purple hanging braids of what resembled large foxgloves—we learned later from Tekin that these are dried eggplants, which can be rehydrated in water and then eaten.

My favorite moment was when we were walking in an open air bazaar area at night, and it was closing time for a number of shops. Men were using long hooked metal sticks to remove their merchandise from the exteriors of their entrances—socks, shirts, lamps, etc. This happened all up and down the street, a sort of semi-random choreography, all these men with their hooks and then at last pulling down the big metal shutters to cover and protect their stores. I loved the synchrony of it. Then towards the end of one street, we encountered a chaotic and entertaining scene where there were dozens of handbags piled together, and a mustached man at the foot the pile was shouting the same word repeatedly (perhaps “Sale! Sale! Sale!”). Several women were frantically picking through the handbags and practically throwing money at him, hundred-lira bills fluttering to the ground.

I did end up making one purchase, my souvenir of Turkey. On our first or second day we were approaching the Topkapı Palace, and a Turkish guy sitting against a wall nearby with a couple other men told me it was closed. He asked me some questions about where I’m from, then the others caught up, and we talked a bit. By this point in the trip, early on though it was, I knew the guy would probably end up asking us if we wanted to buy something, and effectively that’s what happened: “You interested in carpets?”

Lucky for him, I was in fact interested, and so I said yes. A small rug would be a nice addition to the apartment. So we exchanged WhatsApp info and I learned his name is Savaş and that the store where he works is Sultann Bazaar.

A couple days later, in the evening, I went to the shop, which is by one of the four corners of Sultanahmet Square. Savaş wasn’t there yet, but I was greeted by a man who introduced himself as Savaş’s cousin, Hasan. He said he’d known that I was coming, that Savaş had told him. (Savaş has been texting me earlier that he was on his way.) The upstairs part of the shop was very brightly lit, as bright and white as daytime, and full of teacups and tea glasses and lamps and such, stretching far to the back.

Hasan led me downstairs, and the walls there were stacked with rolled up rugs, all of them pale because they are rolled with the obverse on the outside. This room was also brightly lit, with paperwork and old posters here and there in the corners. Hasan started throwing down rugs and telling me about them, and anytime I remarked on what I liked, Hasan would instruct a colleague to get this or that rug for him and then he’d throw that one down as well. Eventually there were several rugs on the floor for me to choose from. He told me how the different rug-making towns have unique qualities or designs to their rugs—sort of like French wines, I guess you could say. The rugs he showed me were very nice. Wool, silk, silk/cotton mix. Very nice designs. Hasan told me how the colors for rugs are made from a number of organic ingredients: tobacco makes yellow, pistachio makes green, pomegranate makes red. I think I remember him saying that blue and black are inorganic—blue, for example, comes from indigo. The ingredients get boiled with the fibers to dye them, and then the makers put the fibers on the loom to make the rug.

I was a bit worried about price but felt shy about asking. In any case, we did do a bit of haggling, or whatever it’s called, and I bought a small silk rug for a pretty penny (but still, allegedly, at a discount). And he said also that he would happily invite me to smoke hookah with him at a nearby bar he frequents.

At some point Savaş did show up and we talked a bit upstairs after I’d purchased, next to a bespectacled man who was working on the ground repairing a rug.

I took my rug back to my hotel room—they had folded it tightly and wrapped it in brown paper. Then I rejoined Hasan to go to the hookah bar nearby in the Fatih district. We stopped by a stand and he bought a wrap for me as I hadn’t eaten.

The hookah bar was really interesting. We walked through a short passageway, past shelves of hot coal containers to the right, and passed briefly through a larger open air setting full of benches and tables where only men were sitting. When we entered this area, we were by a TV which most of the men were watching, so they must have seen this tall blond pale guy and thought “Who’s that with Hasan?”

It was night and the place was dimly lit by Turkish lamps and the TV, and every last man had hookah with him and the entire place was filled with a purplish haze. Waiters hurried here and there carrying coals or teas, and everywhere there were columns and arches and large Arabic inscriptions on the walls. The whole thing had this grungy atmosphere to it that made you think, “Here’s where the locals hang out.” It was super interesting.

We passed through a doorway into a small room lined with carpeted couches where maybe seven or eight people were sitting, all of them with hookah, smoke and vapor swirling slowly. I said hello (“Merhaba”) as we sat down in a corner. A soccer match was going on between two Turkish teams, score 3-0. I’d asked Hasan which of his friends supported which team, but I don’t remember the answer he gave.

I was perfectly placed—everybody else in the room was facing me but had their attention on the television above, so I could watch them with ease while remaining discrete. Against the left wall was a middle-aged man with stern eyebrows and thinning black hair swept intensely to the right, his legs crossed, and reading from his phone with great concentration. Most salient were the two dark circular rims of his glasses, which made him resemble someone of significance like a doctor or a poet. What an interesting figure, honestly. Then on the wall opposite me, three or four bearded men in their thirties, and in the corner to the right, the only woman in the room (the wife of one of the men), who mostly just looked at her phone. Then on the right wall next to Hasan, another older man who Hasan said is a police officer. I made a kidding gesture of “Don’t arrest me” and he laughed.

As I describe these different characters, I realize actually that I haven’t really described Hasan. He had a sort of tired demeanor to him, as he had basically been only on his feet the entire day talking to numerous cruise ship tourist groups that had come into the shop. Shorter than me, a bit heavy. There’s a word I’m searching for to describe his relationship to the community—what I mean is that he knew everybody. During our walk to the hookah bar, he had greeted and shaken hands with a number of other men outside their shops, and he had bantered with the cook making my wrap—I had asked him, “Do you know all the store owners around here?” And at the hookah bar he told me, “This room is our room,” the room reserved nightly for them. And even the way he sat on the couch has a sultanic, even slightly mafioso quality to it, imposing-like. I thought that was pretty cool.

Throughout the evening Hasan told me several details about his life. He said how in addition to the rug shop, his family has a farm in the countryside, and I asked what they produce, and he said animal products: lamb, chicken, organs. I asked if he has a big family and he said yes.

“Mine’s pretty small,” I said. “But that’s okay.”

“Family is family.”

He said that in his town “There are six hundred people with same last name.” I assumed by that he meant they were all related to him.

He has lived in Mexico, Australia, Japan, and I think elsewhere as well. In Japan he met his wife and they have two children now. I told him about how my mother is Puerto Rican and my grandmother was Spanish. He said he has relatives in Madrid.

Hasan ordered a hookah and the waiter came with it and a pail of glowing coals with which he then quickly filled the hookah coal-holder. Hasan said this hookah was flavored with apple and anise.

“What effect does the hookah have?” I asked.

“Makes you dizzy,” he said, pointing a finger to his temple.

He did it for a bit and then handed off the pipe to me. I inserted my plastic nozzle into the pipe and then gave it a few sucks. Bubbles blew in the water down in the base of the hookah. I was reminded of a child holding a glass of milk with both hands, not having yet mastered the skill of a one-handed sip. Eventually I started to hold the pipe more towards the middle, and putting it into the side of my mouth instead of the front.

“Here, watch him,” said Hasan. He was pointing to his friend across the room who was about to take a drag. I watched and the friend began and I mimicked. That ended up being a lot of gas and vapor. I exhaled slowly and gas filled my sight.

At one point I said, “This is giving me a headache.”

“Yes,” Hasan said. “So you need to do more—it will take the headache away.” And that did in fact come to pass, and by the end the world had become ever so slightly slower.

The room was cozy in a way. A dimly lit fish tank behind the police officer. Turkish lamps. A massive wooden wheel attached to the ceiling. Many small tables to place your tea and drinks, with tiled surfaces. Pictures of traditional dancers on the wall. A window behind the man with glasses the let into the rest of the establishment, and through which Hasan would bellow a name whenever he saw a waiter or a friend.

I looked behind me and saw a copy of Dostoyevsky.

“Which Dostoyevsky book is that?” I said to Hasan.

He looked and began to answer—I think he was beginning to say the word “Prison”, probably translating the title to English in his head as best as he could—and then I got it.

“Aha! Crime and Punishment.”

He nodded. “Crime and Punishment, yes.”

“Do you read a lot?” I asked.

“I read but not that kind of book.”

He said he prefers reading history. He is a tour guide, he said, and he likes reading Ottoman history especially. So we got to talking about interesting historical places in Istanbul, and his friends contributed suggestions too. He recommended in particular a mosque called Rüstem Pasha (when I initially attempted to spell it in my notebook, I showed him and asked how I did—“Very bad,” he replied) because I mentioned how the Turkish tiles section of the archaeological museum was closed when we went. Eventually I’d written up a nice list of these recommendations in my notebook.

On the TV a goal was made, the score became 4-0, and then after a bit the match ended. The other friends in the room left little by little, then Hasan and I finished our hookah and tea, and he paid, and we left.

But that can’t be it. Think of all I’ve left out. What about the rest of the details? Things I almost didn’t write down: Hasan showed me live security footage of his shop while we were seated on the couch, and in the small grey screen you could make out a cat, called Aphrodite, which has been living at the store for four years. And he said he doesn’t drive to work but takes a taxi as it is not expensive.

Sometimes I heard the phrase “Alla halla” being said, which I think means something like “Oh my God.”

Shortly after we’d sat down, and Hasan was telling me everyone’s name, he pointed to the man with the glasses on the crossed legs and said, “He knows Spanish.” He said something in Turkish about Spanish to the man, maybe encouraging him to talk in it, but the man didn’t look up. He gave a grunt.

When Hasan ordered tea I stirred mine slowly to keep from spilling but then he took my spoon and stirred rapidly till it overflowed. “If you don’t stir hard it does not mix,” he said. The tea, I think, was green. It may have been orange.

Extraneous details, I’m aware, but if I don’t write them down I’ll forget them, and the memory will lose its richness. The point then is to keep writing and keep remembering.