Istanbul 4

March 12, 2013

Dazzling morning.

The female hotel employees rise and disappear when I come into a room.

At Osman’s Turquoise Restaurant, the background music is Christmas carols. The female voice is plaintive and modal–not unlike the cry of the muzzein-- and there is little in the words to give their origin away. I wonder if anyone paid any attention.

Rose at dawn yesterday and went to Troy. My company, beside the driver and the guide, were four women, a mother and daughter (mom, Anna Liew, was born in Singapore, married a Dutchman, and now lives near Milan; daughter lives in the Hague) who talked to each other alternately in Dutch, Mandarin, and English; Merlin from Las Vegas, and a Latin American woman who lives in Trenton. Merlin and the Latin American woman had met in Costa Rica and have traveled together since. The road  to Troy is very long indeed. At lunch the guide apologized for everything’s being so tedious, and for the fact that everything at Troy was under restoration and we wouldn’t be able to see anything, and she hoped we wouldn’t end the day by thinking it was a disaster. Istanbul stretches on for miles–it’s quite horrifying, actually– but when we got to the actual countryside, it was lovely, with its moundy hills and fresh streams. The European side could have been Ireland, could have been Ohio. We took the ferry and were in Asia. Yes, yesterday I, like Alexander before me, first crossed into Asia, and likely at the same point. Asia looked different, even when it was only the narrow Dardanelles that separated it from all the world I have known.

No place has dwelt in my imagination longer than Troy. I read The Iliad when I could have been more than seven or eight, and ever since it has represented all things distant and longed-for. The actually moment did not disappoint. The present enterprise is awkward and make-shift, with its silly gates and ticket booth. But there was an ancient dog in the dust of the parking lot, begging to be caressed, and I caressed him, and a dappled cat pretending not to want to be caressed, and I caressed her, and a red squirrel on gray stone, and these were excellent omens. What was under reconstruction and wrapped in sheets was the fake wooden horse, and I didn’t care about that. The ruins are hard to put into any order, one city piled upon another, and what belongs to which, I suppose, primarily speculation. But the impact is gigantic. When I passed between the walls–still formidable–I began to weep with joy. Standing on the edge of the stonework looking down onto the plain, one is certain this is Troy, a high citadel overlooking rich countryside (in this it reminded me of Tara) with a constant wind blowing music in the stones and trees. The ringing plain of windy Troy. I stopped, closed my eyes, to have the sound of the Dardanan wind and, it turned out, a single blackbird in my ears, exactly as they must have been in Hector’s.  I sat down and wrote in my diary, “I am writing this on the ruins of Troy.”

I pulled a stone from the ground and put it in my sack. I now possess one of the stones of Troy.

This being the world, the perfection of the moment was battered on all sides. Two of the girls were solely involved in having their pictures taken at various points–at all points, actually– and enlisting the group’s involvement. Our guide, Tugba Bahar, was, though sweet, totally our of her depth language-wise. It took her a full four minutes to express the content “Let’s decide whether we want to go straight home afterward or shop a little,” and when it came to history and archaeology, every phrase was agony. Insecurity and the effort to pull out a near-appropriate word gave her voice a high, carping tone, and at points I found myself willing to exchange anything to get away from that sing-song-y, piercing whine for half a minute and have my own thoughts in the sacred place. The effort to get a little distance, of course, alerted her that something was wrong, and attracted her to my side, to win me over. It was agony. But it passed, and I had some time to sit in the ruins and absorb.

Bahar’s information was not wrong (however irritatingly expressed), as is that of too many tour guides. She did go on about how the “real” cause of the Trojan War was King Agamemnon’s desire for control of the Dardanelles, and I wondered how she or anybody knew that. There is far less documentary evidence for that than for the rape of Helen. It is a modern prejudice to assume a mercantile motivation behind all public action.  We played for a while in the pretty town (Its name means “Capital of Pottery”) where stands the Trojan Horse from the movie Troy, then returned in darkness. I thought I’d had myself a day to remember. Well, not all of it to remember, but the center of it one of the four or five days in a life when one comes upon the Sacred Place.

Windflowers blew in the ruins, white and red.

Came back in time to meet Adem at the Sofa. His day off has changed, so we meet tomorrow for his tour of the “real” Istanbul, whatever that might mean. The affectionate friendliness of people here makes an American suspicious. Unlike customary practice, I have not seen a single monument or sight by myself. I have not sat somewhere and marinated in the ambiance. I have not scribbled out a poem. It is an odd and different experience. Drunk on the street last night, being called at by people who knew me. I was happy.